You can read Burning Man blog posts by Rod here. The Burning Man site has a special biography on Rod, the text of which is below.BurnCast wrote:It is with a sad and heavy heart to announce the passing of Rod Garrett, Black Rock City's City Planner. Rod's duties included city planning and design, design of official structures, as well as production of illustrations and other graphics.
Rod first attended the event in ’95. He says he didn’t realize then that he'd go back to Burning Man again and again, much less end up designing a city for it.
"It started early in 1997, Burning Man had run smack into the stony face of bureaucracy. They had been holding their ever growing event on Federal land without issue, but this year they decided to use a site on private property, and County agencies had jurisdiction. The “book” was thrown, and I was asked to help, and so the odyssey began for me," said Garrett.
All we know about the situation at this time is from a tweets by the Burning Man Earth Team including Ortelius who wrote "saddened by the passing of Rod Garrett" and by Nym who wrote "R.I.P. Rod Garrett, you were truly an inspirational figure. #burningman".
Rod Garrett
BRC City Planning
The London Observer has described Black Rock City as a "beautifully zoned tentopolis, designed with a precision of which the Renaissance city-state idealists or Hausssman would approve." The architect behind this complex plan is Rod Garrett. Rod was raised in southern California in the San Fernando Valley. He arrived in the Bay Area during the early '60's in time to encounter the Beat culture of San Francisco. Here he became friends with the poet Gary Snyder and the comic Lenny Bruce. During this same period he taught himself the art of landscape design and became a licensed contractor, specializing in the creation of fountains, pools and architecture. In 1995, he attended his first Burning Man, and joined the project as our chief designer in 1997. Working in collaboration with Larry Harvey, Will Roger, Harley Dubois, and other staff members, Rod originates the annual plan of Black Rock City. The huge tensometric structure that houses our community's central café was devised by Rod, as was the conception and configuration of the giant Laser Man at our event in 2000. In 2001, he designed the Temple of Enlightenment that formed the pedestal of Burning Man. As resident architect for the project, Rod also creates many other structures and site plans for our Department of Public Works.
Rod Garrett is a courteous, soft-spoken, and deliberate man whose manners mask a lightning apprehension. He is valued by many for his wise counsel. He is also able to grasp the salient features of any design problem, seemingly at a glance. Rod's personal reserve is very like the polish and the perfect fit of his designs. And yet, embedded in each detail and considered word, behind this lucid vision of an ordered world, there exists a big hearted and strong willed creature. Rod Garrett is a passionate beast.