Tensile fabric stage canopy on an arched steel frame beside a white building

From Fabric to Finished Structure

Lightweight Structures designs, engineers, and fabricates tensioned fabric structures: panels, keder, and PE-sealed drawings delivered as one engineered kit, then put up by our network of certified installation partners. We are backed by Seaman Corporation, the family-owned U.S. manufacturer that has made high-performance coated fabric since 1949. Send us drawings or a description of the structure and expect prompt initial feedback.

Seaman Corporation

Insights

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What Does Lightweight Structures Do?

We take fabric structures from the first sketch to the point where they are ready for installation. Our scope includes form finding and engineering, drawings sealed by a Professional Engineer certified in the project’s jurisdiction, and fabrication of the membrane panels, keder, and hardware required for the structure.

We deliver these components as one coordinated, engineered kit. Our certified installation partners then use the drawings and fabricated components to erect the structure.

For more than 15 years, Lightweight has engineered and fabricated tensioned fabric structures and custom fabric panels for architecture, tent rental, and staging. Today, Lightweight Structures is the design and fabrication brand of Seaman Corporation, the family-owned U.S. manufacturer of high-performance coated fabrics since 1949. Seaman makes the cloth; we engineer and fabricate it into structures.

Lightweight Structures does not install. Your project is completed by our network of certified installation partners. They work from the panels, keder, and drawings we supply. Foundations are specified in our documents and performed by others.

Applications

Fabric panel manufacturing for the structure you are building: engineered, fabricated, and handed to a certified installer.

Services

Design and engineering for new structures, reskins for structures already standing, and custom graphics applied directly to the fabric. See all services.

Backed by the People Who Make the Fabric

Our parent company makes the cloth we build with. Seaman Corporation has manufactured high-performance coated fabric in the United States since 1949 and runs the chain in house: yarn, weaving and knitting, coating, finished membrane. Its architectural line is Shelter-Rite®.

Lightweight Structures is not a fabric distributor. We engineer and fabricate with coated fabrics and films, including Seaman’s materials. When a structure calls for a membrane Seaman does not make, such as PTFE-glass, ePTFE, or fluoropolymer film, we specify it from the mill that produces it and fabricate it here. Either way, the person answering your fabric question knows how that membrane was built and how it behaves under biaxial load. See the fabrics we engineer and fabricate with.

When a customer needs a project kept confidential, we respect that. We do not market a project under another company’s name without permission.

Products

The fabrics and keder systems we engineer and fabricate with.

Product

Keder

Keder is the rope edge that connects a fabric panel to its frame. It slides into a channel in an aluminum rail, and the rails fit almost any existing frame.

Product

Fabrics

Compare PVC-coated polyester, PTFE-glass, ePTFE, fluoropolymer film, polyethylene, solution-dyed woven, and PVC mesh. Selection guidance and free samples.