A crushed-up Tesla and a stage with real live plants are among the must-see installations at this year’s Glastonbury festival for architecture and design lovers.
One of the world’s largest music festivals, Glastonbury is often compared to the size of a small city with a temporary population of more than 200,000 people.
Spread across 900 acres, it includes more than 80 stages and various distinct areas all with a specific character, from the esoteric Healing Fields to the electronic music mecca of the South East Corner.
Although many stages remain the same – such as the iconic Pyramid Stage and Block 9’s giant IICON head – the festival also welcomes a colourful roster of new installations, sets and temporary tents every year.
Below, we’ve rounded up some of this year’s most visually and architecturally interesting.
The Dragon by Edgar Phillips
A giant 40-metre-long wyvern clad in “a church worth” of stained glass presides over Glastonbury’s new Dragon’s Tail field, introduced to absorb the influx of visitors to the festival’s all-night dance music quarter after dark.
Seating areas are nestled into the dragon’s undulating form, designed by artist and trained glazier Edgar Phillips, while two sweeping wing canopies provide shade and shelter to weary festivalgoers.
Phillips crafted each glazed section as if it were a traditional stained glass window and completed the whole structure, which will be a permanent new fixture for the festival, in only 11 weeks.
“It’s a steel structure with proper stained glass windows throughout the whole thing – all sorts of textures and different glass,” he told Dezeen.
Among them are pieces of mouth-blown glass that now serve as the dragon’s eyes but were originally collected by Phillips more than 40 years ago from a manufacturer that has since shut down.
In Plants We Trust by Yinka Ilori
London designer Yinka Ilori is making his Glastonbury debut with an installation as part of an outdoor gallery in the festival’s newly revamped Shangri-La area.
“It feels incredible to be part of something so special that thousands of people will get to interact with,” Ilori told Dezeen. “For me, the importance of the art programme is about bringing art to people and making it accessible to everyone from all walks of life.”
Reminiscent of ancient temple architecture, his installation consists of a stepped pyramid with an illuminated corridor cut out of the centre and a flower bed at its apex.
The structure was designed as a “shrine for plants”, reminding festivalgoers of the crucial role that flora plays in the health of people and planet.
In Return by Re:Right Design and British Wool
Wool is having a bit of a Renaissance in design at the moment as a renewable, biodegradable alternative to petroleum-based plastic, used to make everything from sofa padding and packaging to the “world’s first swim shorts made entirely from natural materials“.
To explore the sustainable potential of this ancient material, biodesign studio Re:Right has created a wool fountain with sprouting seeds embedded in its twin spiral structure.
The installation, made from local British wool, forms the centrepiece of the demountable Hayes Pavilion, which every year spotlights a different material innovation. Previous editions have focused on mycelium and bioplastic.
Shangri-La stage by Kaye Dunnings
Glastonbury’s Shangri-La area has received a complete overhaul this year, based around the theme of re-wilding.
In line with this idea, the area’s flagship stage has been reimagined with living plants growing out of its facade that are watered every day via a cherry picker.
After this year’s festival the cone flowers, ferns, reeds and grasses will be moved off site and carefully tended for the next two years, until they return for Glastonbury 2027.
Surrounding the stage are towering 40-foot “trees” designed by creative studio Trigger, onto which nature scenes will be projection mapped every night.
Sunflower Sound System by Magical Mushroom Company and Floating Points
At the newly launched Sunflower Sound System stage in Silver Hayes, festivalgoers will be dancing underneath 25 giant pendulums grown from mushroom mycelium, designed to create optimal acoustics inside the domed tent.
It marks the first time a live music stage has been insulated with this promising biomaterial, formed from the root structure of fungi.
Send them to Mars by Led by Donkeys
A few weeks ago, activist group Led by Donkeys recruited a world war two veteran to drive a tank over a Tesla.
“He said: we crushed fascism in 1945 and we crushed it again today,” co-founder of Glastonbury’s Block 9 area Stephen Gallagher told journalists.
Now, the bulldozed vehicle is on proud display next to the IICON stage, accompanied by a graphic showing Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and a Sieg Heil-ing Elon Musk marching into a rocket bound for space.
“Send them to Mars while we party on earth,” the sign proclaims.
Also in the lineup of the ostracised, shown in orange prison uniforms, are Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, JK Rowling and Conservative member of parliament Suella Braverman – “just some of the people who in recent years have made life on earth more difficult for the rest of us”.
Azaadi by Sophie Sarwar
Glastonbury’s dedicated South Asian stage, which debuted in 2024, has returned this year and grown to two storeys tall.
Its bright orange facade is decked out in traditional Indian flower garlands that gently sway in the wind, made by an independent maker who usually creates them for weddings.
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