Sabine Marcelis installs Maze with "coloured walls of shade" at Coachella 2026

Sabine Marcelis installs Maze with "coloured walls of shade" at Coachella 2026
Coachella Sabine Marcelis

Designer Sabine Marcelis is headlining this year's Coachella Art program with an inflated maze, alongside a pleated-orb installation by architect Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas and a brutalist tower by The Los Angeles Design Group.

The three works have been installed across the festival grounds of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California, USA, where festival-goers can interact with them day and night.

In collaboration with arts programmer Public Art Company (PAC), Coachella Art supports three main installations for the music festival each year.

This year, Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis, known for her work with light, has created a maze-like installation out of large orange and yellow tubes.

"With Maze I wanted to create an environment that evolves with the day," Marcelis told Dezeen. "Light is always a strong catalyst for that evolution."

"During the day, the artwork is a refuge from the harsh sunlight and offers warm, coloured walls of shade. At night, the artwork takes over from the sun by breathing internal light and pulling people into its glow."

Other established designers have created large-scale work for the festival in years past, such as huge inflated flowers by Parisian studio Uchronia for Coachella 2025 and 12 colourful towers by architect Diéédo Francis Kéré.

LA-based design studio Do Lab also creates a stage set each year, which often consists of a large-scale work that covers the audience and performer.

Each year, PAC's founder Raffi Lehrer and Goldenvoice Art Director Paul Clemente work with artists to consider the afterlife of these massive installations, which can take years to plan and develop, largely on site.

Some are broken down, with elements reused, or they may be installed elsewhere in the region, such as Kéré's 2019 work, which is now located in nearby Dr Carreon Park.

Read on for this year's Coachella installations:


Maze installation coachella

Maze by Sabine Marcelis

Following the orange and red hues often used in her work, Marcelis created the ombre Maze installation with several curved volumes made of stacked inflated PVC pipes.

Visitors are invited to meander through the volumes, which were informed by the natural contours of Coachella Valley and "meet the eye like a desert mirage", according to the studio.


ballooon installation coachella

Starry Eyes by Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas

London-based architect Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas reference the local star-shaped golden barrel cactus for his Starry Eyes installation, which consists of pleated-orb volumes nestled together.

Some of the volumes reach 40 feet high (12 metres), while the entire structure creates a fort-like structure that visitors can enter for a bit of shade during the day.


Brutalist tower at Coachella

Visage Brut by The Los Angeles Design Group 

Visage Brut by design studio The Los Angeles Design Group and computational construction studio Stud-IO Construction "reimagines the logic and mythology of a totemic tower".

It is made of a series of illuminated modular boxes, which appear to be folded, cut and warped "just short of losing its structural integrity. "


Satellite covered installation Coachella

Network Operations by Dedo Vabo

Separate from the arts programme that organised the other three, art group Dedo Vabo's three-storey "command center" is the latest in the group's Hippo Empire series, its fourth installation for the festival.

This "overgrown broadcast organism" features satellite dishes and a series of shadow boxes, with performance space on each floor.

The photography is by Lance Gerber. See below for more images. 

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival takes place over 10-12 April and 17-19 April in California. For more events, exhibitions and talks in architecture and design visit the Dezeen Events Guide

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Tomas Kauer - News Moderator https://tomaskauer.com/