What once began as a gathering of twenty people on a beach in Northern California, Burning Man today looks vastly different. Images of Black Rock City in 2023 became a viral sensation as the world watched the temporary city erupt into muddy chaos due to an unexpected 24-hours of torrential rain. The scene left many questioning, is Burning Man dead? Does the utopian vision of anti-capitalist harmony collapse as soon as the rain comes, or when the party ends?

Build No Trace addresses the shortcomings of Black Rock City’s utopian goals and suggests a future model for building and living in hostile environments. This self-sustaining community is centered around a water cistern that collects, filters, and distributes rainwater and holds space for food cultivation.

Structures are communally constructed of cob bricks to form domes, then covered on the exterior with earthen plaster that must be reapplied yearly. The project imagines this community from the time of its construction, to its maintenance, to its eventual decomposition and reabsorption into the soil once abandoned. The excavated structures are fully of the earth, infinitely expandable and congruous with the desert landscape.