Tent Structures

Decades of Expertise in Tent Fabrication

We manufacture the fabric for clearspan tents, rental tents, and one-off tent structures: tops, sidewalls, and everything patterned in between. We make it to fit the frames you already own. Tent work is the oldest part of what Lightweight Structures does, and it is still panel-and-engineering work rather than whole-tent supply.

• Clearspan roof panels, gables, and sidewalls, plus replacement panels for peak tops, high peaks, domes, and tensioned tents.
• Fabric panels for tent structures that are not in anyone’s catalog: custom-designed structures, stage and entertainment covers, and shade walkways.
• Shop drawings, engineering, and fabric selection, so a replacement panel fits the existing frame with the exact finish details you specify.
• Graphics on tent fabric: printing, stenciling, or decals, matched to the requirement. See fabric graphics.

Choose Your Tent Style

Traditional Tent Styles

Rental tents divide into three families of standardized product, and each one puts a different demand on the fabric.

1. Tensile tents use poles and guy straps, with the double-curved fabric acting as a structural member. The membrane is doing real structural work, so patterning and seam placement matter.
2. Frame tents use a light frame for support and rely on guy straps for stability. The fabric spans between frame members and takes wind load in between.
3. Clearspan tents use larger aluminum keder extrusions as a self-supporting frame, with no guy straps at all.

All three can be fully engineered for code-based loads. Clearspan tents are the ones most often designed to meet the building code outright: without guy straps the anchoring requirements drop, which makes code compliance easier to reach and to document. We also custom-design and fabricate small and large tent structures that fall outside these three categories entirely.

Emerging Tent Styles

Two newer styles keep coming up. Airbeam-supported tents use air-inflated fabric tubes as structural beams; developed for military camps, they go up quickly at scale, and under heavy wind load they deform instead of breaking, returning to shape when properly anchored. Related fabrication work is covered under air-supported structures. Stretch tents use a high-elasticity fabric so poles can be relocated to suit the site, recreating a Bedouin-style form or making a flexible transition between standard rental tents.

Lightweight Structures supports the tent and event rental industry with panel fabrication for clearspan and custom tents, and with engineering services that include design of new rental tents and certification of existing ones, either project-specific or generic. See design and engineering services.

Certified Installation Partners Complete Every Project

Lightweight Structures does not install. Your project is completed by our network of certified installation partners. On rental work the install, the load-in, and the load-out are usually your own tent crews; we make the fabric they put up. Where you need a crew, we work with installers who are already familiar with our panels, our keder details, and our engineering.

Scope is defined from the ground up. Foundations and attachment structures are specified but excluded from our scope; our engineers provide the reactions at every anchor point so your local engineer can design those elements for the same loads under the governing building code.

Fabric Sourcing

Tent fabric gets folded, trucked, dragged, and set up again dozens of times a season, so the material decision is a durability decision. We are not a fabric distributor. Every membrane we quote is a material we engineer and fabricate with, chosen for the loads, the lifespan, the light transmission, and the finish your project needs.

Behind that choice is a fabric maker. Lightweight Structures is part of Seaman Corporation, which has been making industrial coated fabrics in the United States since 1949: yarn, weaving and knitting, coating, finished membrane, all under one roof. For a rental fleet that means the durability question is answered by the people who made the material.

Tent manufacturers who buy fabric by the roll rather than finished panels should start with Shelter-Rite Architectural Fabrics, the Seaman Corporation brand for architectural membrane. Lightweight Structures is the panel fabrication and engineering side of the same company. Same company, different door: material questions to Shelter-Rite, fabricated panels and engineered assemblies here.