starpod village
geodesic tent shelters

starpodvillage.com

kit waitlist open

A Star Pod is the simplest geodesic dome there is: an icosahedron on a pentagon floor, skinned white outside and silver inside. Tall enough to stand up in, cool enough to nap in at two in the afternoon on the playa. They started in 2004 as a personal project for a Burning Man camp, and they're coming back.

Join the kit waitlist How to build one
01

cool in the heat

The skin is tree planters' SilviCool: white to bounce the sun, silver to hold the shade underneath. It barely lets light through, and that turns out to be what matters.

I was personally able to sleep inside mine at any time of the day no matter how hot it was outside.Robin, Elven Nation camp notes, 2008
02

geometry does the work

Eleven steel joint plates, twenty-five struts all the same length, fifty bolts. No angles to cut, no special lumber. It bolts together, and it unbolts to pack away for next year.

03

a pod for anything

A bedroom for two. A DJ booth. Kitchen storage. A night workshop. A greenhouse in the backyard between seasons. The frame stays the same; the use changes.

Two white Star Pods pitched side by side on the playa
Two Star Pods pitched side by side.
the shape of it

one pod, 6 foot struts

62 sq ftfloor area
9′across the base
8′6″peak height
5′wall height
Star Pod dimension diagram: 6 foot struts, 9 foot base, 5 foot walls, 8.5 foot peak, 62 square feet
Eleven joints, twenty-five struts, fifteen triangles. Longer struts make a bigger pod; the build guide has the numbers.
the story so far

how the pods came about

Star Pods started as one person's project for a camp at Burning Man: a cheap shelter meant to stay cool in the desert sun. A small circle of campers and friends picked them up from there.

  1. 2004

    the first pod on the playa

    Six-foot struts from Home Depot, a set of joint plates and a tarp: the first Star Pod went up in the dust at Burning Man, and friends got invited to come by and hang out inside.

    A single white Star Pod on the Black Rock playa
    Little pod on the playa.
  2. 2006

    a skin that fits

    A plain white tarp worked OK, but by 1pm the inside was hot because light still got through. So the tarp became a cut pattern: one piece that wraps the icosahedron with as few seams as possible, sewn from SilviCool and closed with hook and loop.

    Dimensioned one-piece tarp pattern for a Star Pod, with hook and loop strips marked
    The one-piece tarp pattern. Blue is loop, red is hook.
  3. 2006–07

    Cosmic Elves camp

    At the Cosmic Elves camp on the playa, pods held the DJ booth and the kitchen stores, and people with tents that were too hot started sleeping over in them. Pods also turned up as night workshops.

    A Star Pod at night with its silver lining lit, two people working at a bench inside
    A pod as a night workshop.
  4. 2007

    bulk orders and a wiki page

    The StarPlate joints came from the US in bulk, split with the crew building the Ewok Village at Shambhala. The Star Pods page went up on the Cosmic Elves wiki with the parts list, tarp drawings and an open invitation to get in on the orders.

  5. 2008

    Elven Nation

    The camp grew into Elven Nation, with crews from Vancouver, LA, Edmonton and the Kootenays. A new run of pods went out as kits: $550 for the whole pod with every part drilled and ready to bolt up, $300 for the white and silver cover alone, $75 for a set of plates.

  6. 2010–15

    the starpodvillage.com shop

    The pods got a shop of their own. It sold the cover for $450 CAD and a fitted floor for $150 CAD, and listed the rest so buyers could get it locally: StarPlates from Stromberg's, 1x2 struts and bolts from any building supply. By 2011 the cover had three screened windows and a bay-window wall. The shop ran until 2015.

    The banner at the top of this page is the shop's logo, drawn in 2007.

    A white Star Pod with a screened triangle window, pitched in a clearing among pine trees
    The pod on the shop's front page.
  7. now

    the plans are back out

    The drawings, patterns and parts list are back online in the build guide, free to use. If enough people want kits, there will be another run.

from the old shop

pods in the wild

Photos from the starpodvillage.com gallery, 2009 to 2015, recovered from the web archive.

A white Star Pod in a meadow, a cabin and pine trees behind it
In a meadow among the pines.
A Star Pod from the front, two screened triangle windows with their covers rolled up
Two windows rolled open.
A Star Pod among young pines, one window open
One wall, one window.
A Star Pod in a cleared hillside with its bay window open
The bay window open.
Looking out of a Star Pod through the open bay window at a meadow and trees, silver lining all around
The view out of the bay window.
Inside a Star Pod: silver lining, wooden struts, two triangle windows and a bed on the blue floor
Inside, set up for sleeping.
Inside a Star Pod from above the bed: silver lining, a lit window, sleeping bags on the blue floor
Silver lining, blue floor.
Inside a Star Pod with a mosquito net over the bed, a tapestry and a red-draped table
A pod made into a bedroom.
the village

bring the village to your gathering

A Starpod Village is a camp of pods: sleeping pods for two, bigger ones for groups, a kitchen pod, a sound pod. It has pitched at Burning Man with Cosmic Elves and Elven Nation, and at Symetree.

If you run a festival, a retreat or a camp and want a village on site, tell us about it in the form below and pick bring the village.

Ask about a village
A row of white Star Pods pitched on grass in front of evergreen trees, people sitting between them
StarPod Village at Symetree.
kit waitlist

want a pod?

Kits get made in runs. Tell us what you'd want and we'll email you when the next run is costed. Pricing comes with it.

What are you after?

Your email is only used to tell you about pods. No newsletter, no sharing, and you can ask to be removed any time.