GATES OF AGARTHA

For the Mexico edition of Gates of Agartha, created for Zamna Festival in Tulum, NAE Design Studio designed an immersive architectural stage that reinterprets the mythology of Agartha through the visual language of Mayan architecture. The project represents the latest chapter in a design research that began five years earlier in Cappadocia, Turkey, where the first Gates of Agartha edition took place in 2021.

Conceived by Gate Experience as an immersive electronic music experience inspired by the legend of Agartha—the mythical underground kingdom believed to preserve ancient wisdom beneath the Earth's surface—the festival was born in Cappadocia, one of the locations traditionally associated with mythical gateways to Agartha. From the outset, the project imagined each edition as the ritual of opening a portal, where music, architecture and collective experience merge into a single immersive narrative.

From its inception, NAE Design Studio joined Gate Experience and founder Yaaz Acar as creative collaborators, developing the project's visual identity through production design, immersive architecture and spatial storytelling. While Gate Experience established the festival's identity and digital presence, NAE shaped its architectural language, creating a fictional universe that has evolved across every edition.

Following its debut in Cappadocia, Gates of Agartha expanded into a travelling series, transforming extraordinary landscapes into new symbolic "gates." Over the past five years, NAE Design Studio has designed nine large-scale portal stages across Cappadocia, Pula (Croatia) and Tulum (Mexico), each responding to its specific context while remaining part of the same evolving mythology.

Rather than designing a standalone festival stage, NAE Design Studio approached the Mexico edition as the next chapter of an evolving fictional universe. Since the first Gates of Agartha edition in Cappadocia, every stage has been conceived as an architectural "portal"—a monumental structure that translates mythology into physical space while responding to its surrounding landscape.

The studio's design process combines archaeological research, sacred geometry and speculative world-building. Early investigations focused on Hattusa, the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire, where Anatolian archaeology, Mesopotamian iconography and ritual architecture informed the visual vocabulary that would define the project. These historical references gradually merged with influences from science-fiction cinema, graphic novels and futuristic visual culture, creating an original architectural language suspended between ancient memory and imagined futures.

One recurring element throughout the project is a fictional writing system inspired by the visual rhythm of Mesopotamian cuneiform. Rather than reproducing historical symbols, NAE developed an entirely original script that reinforces the illusion of a forgotten civilization existing somewhere between archaeology and science fiction.

For the Mexico edition, however, this established language was not simply replicated. It was transformed by its new cultural context.

For Zamna Festival in Tulum, the design team wanted the portal to feel as though it had emerged directly from the jungle.

The research process began on site with visits to Chichén Itzá, where the team studied Mayan architecture, spatial sequences, stone carving, symbolic ornamentation and astronomical alignments. The Mayan understanding of architecture as a dialogue between built form and celestial cycles became one of the project's key references.

Rather than replacing the visual identity developed over previous editions, NAE allowed local architectural traditions to reshape it. The resulting stage became a hybrid architectural language where the mythology of Agartha met the architectural memory of the Yucatán Peninsula.

Conceived as an ancient monument slowly reclaimed by nature, the structure combined monumental stone architecture with speculative design, blurring the boundary between archaeological ruin and imagined civilization.

Unlike Cappadocia or Croatia—where dramatic natural landscapes became an integral part of the scenography—Tulum presented a different design challenge.

Although Zamna offered a more accessible production environment, the surrounding jungle was visually less dominant from the audience's perspective. The architecture itself therefore had to generate the monumentality previously provided by the landscape.

This led NAE Design Studio to conceive a fully three-dimensional architectural composition that appeared carved directly from stone. Every backstage function, circulation route and technical requirement was integrated within the architecture itself, allowing the structure to read as a complete built environment rather than a temporary festival stage.

Materiality became central to the project's success. Stone finishes, weathering and carved details were treated as architectural elements rather than scenic decoration. To ensure consistency with the visual craftsmanship established throughout the Gates of Agartha series, NAE's art director travelled from Turkey to supervise the scenic finishing process, carefully overseeing every texture and surface treatment.

The result was an immersive environment that appeared to have existed within the jungle long before the festival arrived—a temporary architecture capable of transforming a music stage into a believable fragment of an imagined civilization.

Credits:

Stage Design, Scenography & Experience Design : @naedesignstudio

Creative Directors: @milennnae @deni.nae

Art Director: @canips 

Art Production: @alvirez @niniagonzalez 

Head of Production: @momo_maze

Stage Production & Light Design: @moon.monkey

Festival Founder & Creative Director: @gateexperience @yaaz_acar

Location Partners (Production, Photography) : @zamna.music