Leave Catalytic Traces: Land-based infrastructures for environmental mitigation at Fly Ranch, Nevada, USA

Abstract

This article focuses on Leave Catalytic Traces, a design entry for the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) Fly Ranch 2020 Design Competition, located in Fly Ranch, Nevada, USA. Co-hosted by LAGI, an organization that develops artistic renewable energy infrastructure, and the Burning Man Project, which organizes the annual nine-day art festival Burning Man nearby, the programmatic requirements of the competition included the mitigation of the festival’s environmental impact, ecological restoration and a demonstration of renewable energy generation through infrastructural sculpture at Fly Ranch. In response, this research through design case study investigates: (1) Land-based Infrastructures (LBI) as resilient infrastructure and a flexible process-driven framework for site design; (2) a temporary event harnessing participatory processes as a generative strategy; and (3) acupunctural land-based interventions as dynamic ‘sculptures’. The article argues that the work proposes a new design and research process that combines speculative futures and projective imaginaries, which are tested through the development of a process-driven design approach by deploying site-specific land-based interventions.