Sustainable Architecture in Festivals By Arjun Tyagi
Festivals are a popular way of celebrating various cultures, through music and art, it brings people together to celebrate and appreciate creativity in various fields of music and art. But to make this all possible, there is a large credit to the organization. Despite their constraints, time limitation, each festival finds a unique way to appease their attendees. To ensure their continued success this is a major requirement. When it comes to sustainability a lot of different festivals has creative ways to achieve their unique goal. The culture and lifestyle associated with music festivals has greatly changed since they first emerged. Evolving from a symbol of counterculture into popular mainstream entertainment, many music festivals have embraced the use of visual arts and architecture. Typically, this comes in the form of temporary structures and installations that provide visual stimuli, some shade, and often much-needed landmarks for locating lost friends. Even if confined by a tight budget and a short deadline, these temporary structures nevertheless represent exciting examples of efficient and engaging design. The key word is temporary structures, although not many festivals have similar ways of creating their infrastructure a lot of festivals ensure to not leave large footprints and waste behind. A lot of major festivals are adapting their practices to ensure they can contribute positively towards climate change. Following are some examples of major festivals around the world and how they have improved and are trying to change their practices to ensure carbon neutrality. Every April, throngs descend into Indio in California’s Coachella Valley for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Now in its 17th year, Coachella has become one of North America’s biggest music happenings and has also largely embraced participation of artists and architects, who, tasked with designing visually entertaining and shading structures, produce notable temporary installations every year. This 50-foot-tall, colourful tree-house cluster buoyed above Coachella’s landscape this year, providing an intriguing symbol, a plinth to rest on, and shadow to hide under. Every year there are new art installation and temporary architecture present at the festival, and they make it a point to ensure that these structures since 2017 are made from recyclable materials.
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Despite the name, the iconic Burning Man event actually operates with the aim of ‘leaving no trace’. Instead, the organisers encourage festivalgoers to work on reducing waste and they aim to be carbon negative, ecologically regenerative and sustainably manage their waste by 2030. Every year, they create Black Rock City in the middle of the Nevada desert, and every year they take it down, pack up and leave the area without a trace. The week-long event is dedicated to art and community, there’s no fixed line up as such, many performances happen spontaneously. The most important aspect is to remember that they leave the place without trace which cannot be said for all festivals around the world. Looking at the other side of the world, with its unique line-up and ambitious environmental goals, the innovative electronic music festival in Holland is truly cutting-edge. DGTL intends to become the world’s first circular festival by 2020 and is constantly redesigning and evolving the event to meet this dream. And they are certainly achieving great things. For example, the previous year’s festival instead of basing the menu at the food court on what their customers would likely want, they designed it to use up food waste and imperfect produce from local suppliers. In addition to this, they installed compostable toilets, only serve drinks in reusable cups and have chosen to host their performers in Jakarta, Amsterdam’s circular hotel. Similar to the Canadian festival ‘Shambala’, the UK’s Shambala festival made a bold stand in 2016 by going 100 per cent vegetarian and removing all meat and fish products from their on-site food offerings, for both staff and the public. While there is still much debate over what meat does to our bodies, the harmful effects of meat production on our ecosystems are much more decisive and well documented by global authorities such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. In a post-event analysis, 77 per cent of Shambala attendees surveyed indicated they wanted to keep the event vegetarian and about a third of respondents reported actually reducing their intake of meat and fish since, excluding the 30 per cent who responded that they were
already vegan or vegetarian. This year they plan to keep it meat and fish free, however they have not ruled out possibility of introducing some sustainable meat and fish options around the site in surprising and thought-provoking ways. Though many festivals make significant efforts to reduce their carbon footprint, there are some that go one step further by promising to go carbon neutral. Thailand’s Wonderfruit festival has gone even further by pledging to make a net positive ecological impact. The festival has invested in the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve in Indonesia and is a founding member of the National Capital Alliance – an organization which pairs “eco heroes” with capital to help protect endangered forests. These eco heroes include pioneers like Todd Lemons, whose deforestation accounting methodology was adapted by the UN-supported program REDD+, and who helped prevent the deforestation about the size of Singapore in the aforementioned Rimba Raya reserve. Sometimes in our current world it is hard to imagine the terms festival and carbon neutral in the same sentence. However it is shown that it is possible, not just the above mentioned festivals, but there are plenty more throughout the world who are paving the way for the rest to follow and setting their own trends in the process. Most important thing to remember is that none of these organizations are scaling down in size, they are showing it is possible to organize an event of large magnitude and yet not cause strain to the environment. This year however all festivals were probably cancelled due to the world wide pandemic, during which time these organizations probably are coming up with more innovative ways to bring people together to celebrate art and music and ensure to try and stay carbon neutral.
Images: 1. cheering people festival (source: pxhere, n.d.) 2. burning man festival (source: pxhere, n.d.) Sources: 1. Anastasia Tokmakova, 18 Amazing Examples of Festival and Event 1 Architecture to Celebrate the End of Summer, 29th August 2017. Archinect.com 2. Vi Nguyen, 10 ways festivals are tackling social and environmental issues, 26th May 2017. Mixmag.com 3. By Liz Wootton, The 8 Best Sustainable Festivals in the World, 6th August 2019. Eco-age.com 2
