M. Otis Beard writes, “Gregg Fleishman, the architect whose team was awarded the honorarium grant to build the Temple for Burning Man 2013 today, makes insane sculpture, furniture, toy cars, etc. out of single pieces of flat plywood, with no metal fasteners, joints, nails, or screws. Some of his pieces even incorporate wooden hinges and springs.”
The 2013 Temple design is highly geometrical, and will be built using Fleishman’s patented connectors at each joint, capitalizing on the intrinsic strength of the arch at every opportunity in an interlocking jigsaw of triangles and pyramids. No nails, screws, or other metal connectors will be used at all. The gross form of the Temple will consist of a large central trussed pyramid, sixty-four feet tall and eighty-seven feet square, with four smaller satellite pyramids measuring twenty feet tall and twenty-nine feet at the base, intricately interlocked and ornamented in Fleishman’s signature style: Archimedes, Pythagoras, and R. Buckminster Fuller holding hands and enjoying some really good acid.
(Thanks, M. Otis!)