Past & Present Tents

Staff -- Interior Design, 7/1/2001 12:00:00 AM

This year, participants at the 50-year-old Aspen Music Festival in Colorado will be performing in a brand new tent. Designed by Harry Teague Architects, the 2,050-seat Benedict Music Tent is a permanent structure made of Teflon-coated fiberglass tensile material from Birdair, Inc., the same group that fabricated the Millennium Dome in London and the roof of the Denver International Airport. Acoustics (Kirkegaard & Associates) and performance systems (Auerbach + Associates) have been carefully integrated into the design to ensure acoustical precision worthy of world-class performances, while the structure itself remains unobtrusive in its spectacular setting in the Rockies. The tent is the third to grace the site, following Eero Saarinen's 1949 design and the 1,750-seat canvas Bayer-Benedict Tent erected in 1965.