A Biodegradable Tent for Music Festivals

A Biodegradable Tent for Music Festivals

Klappe, J.S.

Ninaber van Eyben, B. (mentor)
De Rijk, T. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Strategic Product Design

2013-10-18

This thesis concerns the design process of a bio-based and biodegradable tent based on the principles of mass production. It proposes a solution for the problem of left-behind tents at music festivals. Each year tens of millions of people camp at music festivals worldwide and about one in four campers leaves their tent behind as waste afterwards. This annually returning phenomenon is a nightmare for both festival organizers and their visitors, as for the environment and society as a whole. Circumstances at music festivals are harsh. People spill mud and beers on their tents, trip over guy wires, stand in endless lines, and carry lots of luggage to and from festivals. Knowing this, festival-goers buy cheap and low-quality camping items that they can leave behind if necessary. We found that this is not so much a behavioral issue, as it is a genuine design flaw. People are using durable products as if they are disposable. This is where the idea of an inexpensive, bio-based, and biodegradable tent becomes relevant. By proposing such a concept, the design is mainly focused on materials, as the product’s core functionalities (a safe 2-person shelter) are more or less equal. As a theoretical framework the shape-material-process trinity (Beukers et al.) is used to understand the implications of using alternative materials to optimize an existing type of product. By choosing film instead of fabric we were able to not only propose a different design, but also a radically different way of tent manufacture. By utilizing blow-extrusion as a technique for making tents, we needed to familiarize ourselves with its possibilities via small scale testing. Via manual experiments and material feedback (‘handmade’) we pursued in a form-finding process. This enabled us to develop a product design that is the link between something that can be made in a fully automated way (‘handless’), and something that expands into a tent structure economically interesting. The concept of a mass produced, bio-based, and biodegradable tent seems viable. So, further developments are recommended. On top of that, it also shows the real value of mass production; it is clever and precise. This is because production at large scale simply needs to be highly efficient. Therefore, it can also be used to solve environmental issues, rather than being its effector.

Festivals
Tent
Bio-based
Biodegradable

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:33d65962-3aa7-4eea-a8fd-2a1196a4b8d8

2014-10-18

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Klappe, J.S.