Tent Ideas

A 30-foot-diameter floral chandelier made by Set Masters decked the yellow dining pavilion under a clear-top tent. Wolfgang Puck Catering's custom menu included on-theme treats, like flower-shaped cookies that seemed to bloom from flowerpots. DJs Spider and Daisy O'Dell spun for the crowd. Town & Country handled the rentals.

A giant clear tent from Town & Country housed the press conference to announce Virgin Galactic's new SpaceShipTwo.

The teepee-style tents can hold as many as 400 people.

"Transparency was a big message throughout the program," Production Glue executive producer Jennifer Kurland said of the decision to use a clear-sided tent. The hashtag #TalkingTransition was carved into plywood and displayed on the side of structure to encourage passersby to join the conversation online.

The Design Miami entrance pavilion consists of inflated tubes bundled together, with foam seating in the courtyard.

Technically, the Diesel tent was a roofing system—a structure that can support heavy weights a tent can't.

Guests headed to the Untitled Art Fair V.I.P. preview and vernissage on Monday approached the oceanfront location through a pink tent façade that also served as a sign fronting Ocean Drive.

The one-dimensional tent also marked the pathway leading to the main entrance of Untitled.

The Palmer House Hilton Hotel set up a tent to offer tastings from its Lockwood Restaurant and Potter's Lounge. To channel the venue's meld of old-world aesthetics and modern amenities, Event Creative designers filled the tent with plexiglass bars and crystal chandeliers.

Jim Beam Global had a narrow 30-foot tent that combined three brands: Skinny Girl, Pucker, and Courvoisier. "The challenge here was that each brand needed an identity, but they shared a space," said designer Kelly Wagner. She placed Pucker in the center of the tent under a candy-hued canopy that had a lemonade-stand feel. The canopy contained the colors of the different Pucker flavors.

The Skinny Girl section was decked in the brand's signature red-and-white colors. The space held a white bar with a red, tufted panel. The buttons in the tufting were black to mimic the black dots that also decorate the Skinny Girl branding.

Belvedere vodka's sleek tent had an illuminated bar and billowing white drapes. Fresh citrus fruits were displayed to highlight the brand's vodka flavors Lemon Tea and Pink Grapefruit.

Patron tequila had a bright, green-and-white space with oversize replicas of the brand's bee-shaped logo.

Christina Greenstein, senior manager of special events at Bon Appétit, consulted with her creative team to develop a vision for the brand's tent at the festival. "They were looking for me to pull together an overall theme inclusive of tasting tables, furniture, and ceiling decor to attract attendees to their 80- by 16-foot tent," said Wagner. The space housed five tasting stations and a lounge, and Wagner selected an autumnal color palate of mushroom, beige, and copper for the space. The stations had stained wood tabletops with custom acrylic insets. Landscapes growing from within the tables held broom corn, fountain grass, ferns, and fresh ivy. Vintage farm windows suspended from the ceiling added a sense of intimacy.

A "Whiskeys of the World" tent served as a showcase for four whiskey brands in a 20- by 20-foot space. "It was a challenge to design the tent since each brand needed a corner and a food station in the center," said Wagner.

The whiskey tent was open on three sides, and, to hide the backs of the bars without closing off the area, Wagner employed a wood-slat design that framed the front corners of the space. She also designed a burlap backdrop with stenciled brand names and brought in distressed bars and barrels. The overall look, Wagner said, had a "woodsy distillery feel."

Constellations Brands' "Passport to Wine" tent represented a departure from previous years. "The brand has typically executed this space using rich leathers and mahogany," said Wagner. "This year they asked for something that wouldn't be too far off from the brand's [traditional image], but would bring a modern, luxe wine-bar feel." To achieve that look, Wagner and her team used faux boxwood hedge as the backdrop and brought in silver mirrors on which servers wrote the featured wines of the day. Organizers accented the space with silver travel accessories such as chrome binoculars, lacquered books, and a model airplane.

For Blue Moon's autumnal tent, designers brought in dark-stained wood pergolas and clusters of mason jars filled with mixed floral arrangements that complemented the brand's trademark orange-and-yellow color palette. "To bring more of a harvest look to the space, I did a bright orange bar, which was the perfect pop for the brand," said Wagner.

Tent companies cite an increase in requests for the Arcum tent, which has an arched beam and provides an alternative look to the traditional clearspan structure. Hollywood Tentworks in Pacoima, California, constructed an Arcum tent at L.A. Live for the 2011 N.B.A. All-Star Game.

In November, the online eyeglass frame brand Warby Parker used a tent-like structure from the Colorado Yurt Company (970.240.2111, colorado yurt.com) in Montrose, Colorado, for its holiday pop-up bazaar. The yurts were a quirky and budget-friendly way to fill a garage space on Grand Street in New York.

Available to rent in the U.S. for the first time, Denver-based EPS-Doublet’s (800.227.0337, epsdoublet.com) Stretch Tent line, manufactured by RHI Tents in South Africa, is made with waterproof stretch fabric. Larger tents can have sides up or down, while poles can be repositioned to accommodate more guests; units can also be wrapped around trees, rocks, and walls. The tents can be custom-colored and printed.

Karl’s Event Services now has a patent-pending temporary structure called the Mirage Series, which incorporates a hard material facade as well as glass and vinyl. The series can be used for temporary events like showrooms, retail spaces, and fashion shows, and was most recently seen during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York.

Raj Tents in Los Angeles and San Leandro, California, launched its Beach Chic line for outdoor events last year. The tents, built around the frames of the company’s popular Pergola and Pavilion tents, come with a sea-spray or turquoise exterior and blue wave valance. Additional decor options include crystal chandeliers, mirrors, and hand-carved furniture for lounge settings.

Karl’s Event Services (917.449.3844, karls.com) in Belleville, New Jersey, recently developed a custom mezzanine-level option to be incorporated into clearspan structures, intended for extra seating niches or V.I.P. areas.

In 2011, Sperry Tents (508.748.1792, sperrytents.com) in Rochester, Massachusetts, introduced the Sperry Pavilion. The bilevel unit has an ivory sailcloth top and wood framing, with a fabric cupola overhead that adds height to the tent as well as a unique design element. It can be fully sided and enclosed when needed.

Classic Tents (310.328.5060, classictentrentals.com) in Torrance, California, reports an increase in requests for hard structures. The company was called upon to construct a custom, hard structure with glass and branding for last summer’s Nike U.S. Open of Surfing.

Based in California, Shelter Co supplies luxury tents—and can coordinate planning details—for corporate meetings and retreats. The European-style tents can be filled with couches, tables, and decorative rooms to create intimate gathering spaces.

At the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic, a collection of six marigold chandeliers filled the V.I.P. tent ceiling, each standing eight feet high and made from thousands of strands of silk marigolds in the brand's recognizable yellow shade.

Inspired by the Rose Bowl, the pillows in the lounge area depicted different aspects of the game with three different designs.

DirecTV's holiday party

Heineken had a dome-shaped tent meant to represent a reinvented beer cooler. After having their IDs checked, guests entered the air-conditioned space to find open bars doling out the Dutch beer on tap. Darkened and shot through with green light—the brand's signature hue—the tent had projection videos of real-time Pitchfork concerts playing on its ceiling. The California-based Corso Communications produced the activation.

The tent had a large outdoor viewing deck that overlooked red-carpet arrivals at the Hilton. The party had a viewing component for a select group, which began at 4:30 p.m., and showed the ceremony on large plasma screens throughout tent and on the deck.