Tents: from the beginning

I first began working on the Future Tents project at the end of May 2010, by researching various biodegradable materials as well as conducting plenty of research to see what eco tents currently existed on the market.  The next step was to begin sketching out various ideas that made use of different biodegradable materials.  I quickly realised that folded cardboard would be the best and most visually attractive method of achieving the tent I wanted.

Now that I had a better idea of what kind of tent I would design, it was time to begin prototyping with paper.  The more I folded, the more I realized that I was actually creating an origami tent, which meant I needed to find someone who was knowledgeable in this traditional art form.

I contacted Mark Bolitho, the secretary of the British Origami Society to see if he would be interested in giving me a hand.  He agreed and met me at my studio where we spent an entire day folding and experimenting with various paper structures.

I then chose the folded frameworks I thought were best suited to the project and began folding larger structures out of cardboard.  These new prototypes were approximately 1/3 of the eventual finished version.  From there, I was able to see which of the three was the most structurally sound.

The next step was to fold the better of the three models at a larger scale (1/2 of the eventual finished version), and see if it could withstand rain and bad weather. I was also aware that I would need to use more than one sheet of cardboard, which would mean the tricky part would be to reinforce points where the two halves joined.  Finally, I applied beeswax to the whole tent to offer some waterproofing.

While the tent was outside testing the fluctuating London weather, I got to work on the design for the Future Tents logo with Naresh Ramchandani. The final design was sent to the printers and made into a stamp.

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