From a Utah temple to a Denver exhibition hall: the story of the person who discovered seventy-five triangular buildings throughout the US

During a warm day in 2017, Los Angeles-based creative Ian James ended up at the town bar, the single open venue in Nekoma, North Dakota.

Lingering until the early hours, while striving not to seem too much like a West Coast resident in a town of under 30 locals, James began a discussion with a residents who explained how to gain access the Stanley R Mickelsen Safeguard Complex.

The previous cold war complex, erected during the nuclear standoff period and only operational for six months before being decommissioned, was his objective: particularly, its stark stone observation structure resembling an triangular monument lacking an tip.

For the next two days, while James stayed overnight in a open area to photograph the radar tower in different natural light with his large format equipment, he became transfixed by the building's strange nature as a "purpose built ruin … outside chronology".

It was in this place, within the structure's spiritual vibrations, that James understood the photographs of geometric buildings he'd been documenting – from an business center in Indianapolis to a place of worship in the Utah desert, a science museum in Denver, a Walmart in Canada, and many homes – were a project that would lead to a publication.

A ten years – and more than seventy-five triangular buildings in nearly 20 US states – later James has published Pyramids: Special Economic Vortex Zones of North America.

James's fascination to catalog United States triangular buildings was inspired by a metaphysical audio radio show he hosted on broadcasting network featuring independently produced tapes ornamented with pyramid motifs that would have first been found in spiritual retailers or massage parlors – before he sourced them from eBay.

Over his expeditions on a veritable pilgrim's trail to these locations, James theorized that the relationship between new age beliefs and triangular structures around the United States is indicative of what he calls "economic spirituality" – the urge to direct the pyramid's ancient, eastern, spiritual vibrations toward the manifestation of American values and, as he puts it, create a "area for the 'faith' of free market economics in the US".

The outdoor retailer geometric building in Tennessee, which James documented for multiple days but didn't go inside – despite its offer of "total commercial journey" featuring a lodging, inside marshland, shooting area, restaurant and overlook deck – is a notable case.

Planned in the 1950s as a collection of multiple edifices named the Great America Pyramids, in a nod to the municipality's historic title, the lone structure was built in nineteen ninety-one and has served various roles: such as a music location opened by the Grateful Dead and a arena for the basketball team.

It's also garnered the moniker "ominous structure" due to loud acoustics of spectator applause and the highly inauspicious taking away of a spiritual object placed in its summit by the owner of the Hard Rock Cafe to channel mystic powers.

Unoccupied for nearly a decade, the owner of outdoor company unwillingly struck a arrangement with the municipality in 2008 to renovate the location (employing $one hundred million of taxpayer money in compensation of two percent of the store's overall income or, at minimum, $one million transferred to the city in lease payments each year), but on condition that he captured a freshwater species in the great river.

The cosmos gave him the fish, but doubts persist as to whether the municipality has ever obtained their complete small percentage.

The superstitious events and overly lenient public financial regulations that have enabled Bass Pro Shops to prosper are an clear representation of a "building which has been stripped of purpose" and instead become, what James calls "the raw synthesis of the essence of national commerce".

Ironically, he observes, even when pyramid sites are devoted solely to spiritual activities "there exist these sacred buildings in the US but they have to be generating income or tickets or economic viability."

The United States spiritual experience is predominantly commercially motivated.

In order to photograph the geometric building at the Buddhist monastery in California's north, James experienced "spiritual treatment" treatments in twenty nineteen – wherein he lay inside a big polymer triangular structure surrounded with metallic thread while a female monk directed brightly colored beams at different organs in his body.

Operated by the religious figure, who proclaims himself the return of Jesus Christ and the long-prophesied Medicine Buddha, the monastery is dwelling to religious men and religious women.

They manage metaphysical items, which provides head pyramids, spiritual instruments, meditation systems, geometric shapes and ritual objects to tourists and followers, maintaining their communal existence – which is accompanied by the constant soundtrack of the religious figure's recordings.

Private homeowners that James has visited also have faith in the metaphysical energy of their homes and similarly, he states, "{aspire|aim|str