WHAT COMES FROM EARTH GOES BACK TO EARTH
The Loop
A Regenerative Loop of Water and Nutrients at Fly Ranch, Nevada
regenerative
waste becomes a resource
The Loop is a visionary land art project designed to prototype a regenerative water and nutrient system in the heart of the Nevada desert. It serves as a radical experiment in post-carbon living and presents a glimpse into how we can design new ways to live with nature and not from it.Set on the remote and magical landscape of Fly Ranch in Northern Nevada—where access to public utilities like electricity and water is nonexistent—The Loop reimagines what human settlements can become in a world facing the impacts of climate change and resource depletion. Designed by a multidisciplinary team, the project focuses on water recycling and nutrient regeneration. It harvests, filters, and repurposes water and waste, transforming the harsh desert into a self-sustaining ecosystem.Winner of the 2020 Burning Man & LAGI Fly Ranch Design Challenge, The Loop inspires a vision of sustainable living, reconnecting us with nature and grounding us in the cycles of the earth.
The wall of itself is a brush stroke,
a path of a snail traveling over the land,
an abstract geometry of both movement and stillness.
Made with straw and clay,
built to stand for generations,
the swirling wall befriends the land it rests upon,
merging in harmony with the dry sand.
And from this wall, life starts to grow.
Collaborate with nature
Cycles that sustain life
The Loop meanders through the land as a living wall made of natural materials like straw and clay. This structure integrates essential communal spaces—such as toilets, kitchens, greenhouses, gardens, composting systems, and filtration ponds—culminating in a circular bathhouse. The spacial design connects the community to the natural cycles of water, nutrients, and life, blending art and sustainability into a living system.Within The Loop, natural water is harvested, purified, and used to refresh our human bodies. In turn, human waste is repurposed as nutrients for the hydroponic greenhouse, creating a closed-loop system where waste becomes a resource. Greywater from the communal kitchen, showers, and hand-washing stations is pumped by solar energy through a sludge reed bed, before being funneled into the hydroponic greenhouse.This project illuminates the invisible cycles that sustain life, often hidden in cities beneath layers of concrete and steel. The Loop brings these cycles to the forefront, honoring them as sacred, essential threads that bind us to the ecosystem.
Fly Ranch awakens your senses with its intricate landscape, where vast stretches of sagebrush and meadows whisper ancient stories. The Loop is weaving itself into this landscape, breathing in the rhythms of the earth. In this sacred exchange, Fly Ranch becomes a living artwork, a sanctuary for the vision of regenerative futures, where Burning Man’s spirit finds a permanent home.
embodiment
Awaken Your Senses
The Loop invites you to reconnect with the transformative essence of water—a force that flows through our bodies, across landscapes, and throughout time. Water’s endless cycle links the past, present, and future, reminding us of our deep interconnectedness with all life. Through The Loop, humans are reintegrated into nature’s ecosystems, while our creative power to bring dreams and visions into reality is honored. Everyday rituals like bathing, growing food, and turning waste into nourishment take on deeper significance, becoming acts of meaning and connection.Entering the bathhouse becomes a ritual of transformation, encouraging you to shed not just your clothes but also your mental and emotional burdens. It’s a moment of cleansing that allows you to align with your true self and step into the person you aspire to be, bringing your dreams to life.
PROTOTYPING THE LOOP
The Borderland, sweden
TEMPLE OF RELEASE
Based on The Loop project from the LAGI competition, we prototyped a composting toilet system for the 2022 Borderland burn in Sweden, serving nearly 2,500 visitors. Known as the "Temples of Release," these 4.2-meter-tall structures were designed as sacred spaces, with skylights allowing natural light to filter down, creating a sense of openness and connection to the sky.As you enter the temple, the soaring architecture invites a meditative experience—connecting your body to the sky above and grounding you to the earth below.At night, the temples glow softly in the dark, acting as beacons across the festival grounds, both easy to locate and striking as illuminated sculptures. The flat-pack design allows for easy storage and reassembly at future events.The Cult of Release—a dedicated group of volunteers—maintained the toilets throughout the festival. After the event, the collected waste was composted and used as fertilizer by local farmers, contributing to a closed-loop system that nourishes the land.
alversjö, sweden
Creative infrastructure
Alversjö is a farm property located just outside Eksjö, Sweden, acquired by The Borderland community with the goal of exploring the space between dreams and realities. The community supports initiatives aimed at fostering more artistic, creative, cultural, socially exploratory, and ecologically sustainable spaces within our society.For the past two years, The Loop has been composting 4000 liters of fecal matter from The Borderland 2022 event using the bokashi method. Now, in the autumn of 2024, we are returning this compost to the earth, enriching the crops in the Secret Garden. This hands-on work with soil and compost is a crucial part of our process in understanding how to sustainably manage The Loop, as we test and prototype systems that can be scaled and refined.This endeavor is not only practical but also involves close collaboration with various experts as well as local authorities to secure necessary permits. These combined efforts form the foundation for turning our vision of The Loop into a tangible reality.
fly ranch, nevada usa
SCALE 1:1 SKETCHING
Our first visit to Fly Ranch was in 2022. As we walked the land and felt the wind sweep through the tall cheatgrass, we immediately knew—this was the place.In the vast desert landscape, a spring suddenly emerges from the ground, creating an oasis where unique plants thrive, and animal tracks mark the muddy earth. It was here that we held an intimate tree-planting ceremony to honor the land and mark the site.We sketched a full-scale 1:1 layout of The Loop, carefully considering its relationship to the surrounding environment. At the end of the week, during the LAGI campout in May 2022, we held the opening ceremony within the footprint of The Loop, setting the stage for what was to come.
contact
ABOUT THE TEAM
We are a dynamic multidisciplinary team with strong roots in The Borderland, the Scandinavian branch of Burning Man. For many years, we’ve worked together on exciting architectural art projects, including installations like a nature temple and a sauna shaped as a transparent, truncated octahedron. Our project, The Loop, was proudly selected as one of the top ten proposals in the LAGI 2020 Fly Ranch Design Challenge!Today, our team includes Mathias Gullbrandson (artist & entrepreneur), Julia Andersson (architect), Per Dahlgren (designer), Bonnie Krantz (process leader) and Joel Lindefors (sustainability strategist). We also had the pleasure of working with Olle Bjerkås (artist & engineer) and Anna Johansson (landscape architect) in developing The Loop proposal.
The Loop in Media
Forbes / "The Future Of Burning Man Emerges At Fly Ranch, An Outrageous New World In The Black Rock Desert"
Dezeen / "Top ten designs for Burning Man's off-grid desert outpost Fly Ranch revealed"
Land Art Generator / "A beacon of hope emerges from the Black Rock Desert"
Medium / "Prototyping with the LAGI 2020 Teams at Fly Ranch"
Arkitekten / "Svenskt team bland vinnarna i stor internationell tävling"
Fly ranch book
The Loop is featured in the 2022 book Land Art of the 21st Century. In a review, The Art Newspaper remarked, “Hopefully, Land Art of the 21st Century will inspire action on the climate and ecological emergencies worldwide. The methodologies and design philosophies behind real-world regenerative structures can be replicated. The true value of these land art installations lies in their embodiment of collective, sustainable, and inclusive principles. By creating new ways of organizing our societies, we may find the wisdom to live in harmony with our planet.”The book is available for purchase through Hirmer or Amazon.
Join the realization
HOW CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE?
We are creating a vision of how humans can once again become part of the natural flow. We welcome your questions, ideas, and proposals. To bring The Loop to life, we need both financial and hands-on support. Building The Loop requires all of us working together. Please reach out to us with questions or ideas!