Piling the Arcadia Dragonfly at Glastonbury Festival 2024
Photo credit: @shotawaydotcom
We were delighted to play our part in two of the most talked-about spectacles at Glastonbury Festival — providing the piled foundations for Arcadia's Dragonfly at Glastonbury 2024, the extraordinary successor to their iconic Pangea crane, and the Pangea crane itself at Glastonbury 2019. Seeing the finished structures come alive in front of tens of thousands of festival-goers made these some of the most memorable projects we've ever been part of.
The Arcadia Dragonfly is built from an ex-Royal Navy helicopter, repurposed into a 40-metre biomechanical art installation powered entirely by renewable energy. Advanced Mini Piling Systems provided the piled foundations that anchor this extraordinary structure to the ground at Worthy Farm.
What is the Arcadia Dragonfly?
Arcadia has been a fixture of Glastonbury Festival since 2007, when their fire-breathing mechanical Spider first took to the Park Stage field. The Dragonfly is their latest creation — a spectacular biomechanical insect adapted from a decommissioned Royal Navy helicopter, complete with laser wings, pyrotechnics, and a sound system to match. It made its debut at Glastonbury 2024, drawing huge crowds across the festival weekend.
The BBC followed the Dragonfly's journey from conception to launch — you can watch their coverage and a full documentary below.
Arcadia Dragonfly at Glastonbury Festival 2024 — BBC coverage
Arcadia Dragonfly — Glastonbury Festival 2024
You can also read more about the Dragonfly's story on the BBC News website.
Our Piling Works on Site
Our team arrived on site at Worthy Farm, Pilton weeks ahead of the festival to carry out the piling works. Working in the wide open Somerset landscape — with the Dragonfly's steel framework beginning to take shape around us — was a unique experience. The ground conditions required a carefully considered piling programme to ensure the foundations could support the full loads of the structure and remain under the plough line when the festival is returned back to farm.
Driven Pile Foundations
The foundation solution for the Dragonfly required a series of 300 mm ∅ auger piles to carry the significant loads imposed by the structure's steel legs. Our team bored the piles to the required depth, with the pile heads then exposed and prepared ready for the pile caps and ground beams above.
The images below show the completed auger piles exposed in the excavation, with the rebar cages installed ready for the pile cap concrete — a clean result on a demanding programme.
Pile Caps and Finishing Works
With the auger piles complete, the pile cap excavations were formed, reinforced, and prepared for concrete. The rebar mats were carefully fabricated and placed within the shuttered excavations — as shown below — before the concrete was poured to complete the foundation package.
The Dragonfly in Action
Seeing the Dragonfly come to life at Glastonbury 2024 — knowing our foundations were beneath it — was something genuinely special. The images below, courtesy of the festival's official photographers, give a sense of the scale and spectacle of what Arcadia created.
It was a genuine privilege to be involved in a project of this scale and creativity. Our thanks go to the entire Arcadia team for trusting us with the foundations of such an iconic structure, and to @shotawaydotcom and Matt Eachus / @TheMancPhotographer for the stunning festival photography.
If you have a large-scale or unusual foundation project and would like to discuss how we can help, please get in touch with our team.
Got a Challenging Foundation Project?
Talk to our team about driven piling for large-scale or complex structures.