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Want more privacy at work? Steelcase says: pitch a tent

BOOKMARK ARTICLE

Heightened focus, increased comfort and ultra-flexibility are just a few of the reasons the global workplace thought leader has taken to making tents for workspaces.

Inspired by an in-house study on privacy, the Steelcase Design team conceived the campsite-meets-office crossover, citing psychological comfort and feelings of safety inside a tent. They called on the help of industrial designer Chris Pottinger – who has developed for the likes of The North Face, REI and more – to come up with a range of comparatively inexpensive, small-scale and material-saving tent solutions to achieve the same effect within a workspace.

Engineers and upholsterers joined in on the collaboration, experimenting with tensile structures and materials to understand the best configurations for the unconventional tent-setting. The Pod Tent – an outdoor-esque shelter that nods to London’s Gherkin Building – and the Overhead Tent, an architectural design especially suited to hybrid working, were born from this investigation.

The Pod Tent (middle) and Overhead Tent (bottom) give employers and workspace operators inexpensive, small-scale and material-saving privacy solutions.

An ideal alternative to costly pods and enclaves, the Pod Tent cocoons independent workers, offering moments of quiet concentration and rejuvenation. Its frame is constructed from aluminium tent poles, providing a diagonal shape that’s paired with a wide-mouth entry, open-air roof and exposed exoskeleton. Dressed in a lightweight fabric dubbed Ascent, it can be furnished with an individual desk area or lounge furniture, and set-up time takes less than an hour with two people without tools.

The Overhead Tent offers the same ease of set-up and use and flexibility but is especially accommodating to groups. Adopting an airy, wave-like look, the freestanding structure encourages socialization and collaboration between employees, with an open-plan layout that provides privacy and porosity at the same time. 

Steelcase’s Work Tents give employers and operators a way to make workspaces more user-friendly, playful and dynamic.‘Tents inherently make you feel comfortable and safe when you’re inside of them,’ says Pottinger. ‘The idea of bringing tents to the workplace is so innovative and something I had to be a part of.’

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