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The Sky Is Not The Limit

The Sky Is Not
The Limit
Rudi Enos
THE HISTORY, DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF
THE LARGEST TEMPORARY STRUCTURES
IN THE WORLD
Rudi Enos
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The Sky Is Not The Limit
Copyright (c) 1992 - 2013 - Rudi Enos
Published by arrangement with Phaedrus Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publicaton may be reproduced, distributed, or trans-
mited in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic
or mechanical methods, without the prior writen permission of the publisher, except in
the case of brief quotatons embodied in critcal reviews and certain other noncommercial
uses permited by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed
Atenton: Permissions at the address below.
Phaedrus Press
RED Technic Ltd
19 20 Petre House, Petre Street, SHEFFIELD S4 8LJ
Co reg No - 3824819
0114 257 7755
www.bookofents.com
info@bookofents.com
Ordering Informaton:
Quantty sales. Special discounts are available on quantty purchases by corporatons, associa-
tons, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.
Printed in the UK
ISBN 978-0-9000000-0-0 HF0000.A0 A00 2010
299.000 00dc22 2010999999
First Editon
Rudi Enos
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Rudi Enos is one of the foremost designers of special structures in the world. Long span struc-
tures, and in partcular long span tension membrane structures require specialist expertse
in design, analysis, manufacturing techniques, and installaton procedures. Only a handful of
engineers in the world have this expertse and Rudi is one of that select group. When it comes
to portable structures, the 35 years Rudi has spent developing ever-larger structures means
that in this area he has no peers.
His portable venue designs are used to house the largest audiences, the most prestgious
events and the most graceful installatons the event business has ever seen. These designs
refect the relatonship between space, weight, performance and the energy required to
undertake the project. Rudi has designed and built, or designed for others, more tented,
mobile and demountable structures than all other Britsh designers put together. This is his
frst tent based book.
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The Sky Is Not The Limit
Index
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Early Days 7
1.2. Lets Start At The Beginning 9
1.3. The Circus Comes To Town 12
1.4. World Class Events In Tents 13
Chapter 2: TABERNACLES, TEMPLES AND CIRCUSS
2.1. Famous Tentmakers 16
2.2. Signifcant Historical Events In Tents 19
2.3. The Kaaba and the Tabernacle - 2450 BCE 22
2.4. Xerxes Royal Tent - 480 BCE 25
2.5. Alexander The Greats Cosmic Tent - 356 BCE 28
2.6. The Pavilion Of King Ptolemy Philadelphius - 283 BCE 31
2.7. Kublai Khans Pleasure Palace - 1200 33
2.8. Kublai Khans Bamboo Palace Recreaton 39
2.9. The Tents Of Tamerlane - 1400 42
2.12. The Great Britsh Exhibiton 1851 47
2.13. Tent Churches 48
2.14. Circus Big Tops 50
Chapter 3: DIFFERENT STYLES
3.1. Rental Structures For Performance 65
3.2. Big Boys Toys 68
3.3. A Time Of Change 68
3.5. Making It Happen 70
3.6. The Great Leap, Portable Tension Structures 71
Rudi Enos
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Chapter 4: THE MAJOR STRUCTURES
4.1. Major Structures - The Kayam 74
4.3. Major Structures - MT66 Tension Structure 100
4.4. Major Structures - The Mobile Structures MegaDome 103
Chapter 5: WHY THINGS ARE DONE THIS WAY
5.1. Strength Thro Shape 108
5.2. Failure - Engineering For 109
5.3. The Kayam 109
5.4. The MT65 111
5.5. The Valhalla 113
5.6. The MT66 115
5.7. The MegaDome 115
5.8. Transportng The Beast 115
5.9. Erectng The Beast 120
5.10. Operatng The Beast 124
Chapter 6: SOME MAJOR PROJECTS
6.1. Touring Shows In Portable Structures 130
6.2. The Walt Disney On Ice Project 132
6.3. The Radiohead Tent Tour 135
6.4. Millennium Eave - 26,00 People 142
6.5. Glastonbury Festval 153
6.6. The Earth Summit - Johannesburg 161
6.7. MTV Europe Awards Roma 2004 162
7.1. The Future Of Portable Structures 167
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The Sky Is Not The Limit
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Early Days
This is the story of some of the largest portable structures ever built, both in the ancient world
and today. My involvement is obviously in the later end of that tme scale. Portable struc-
tures have always been used in many areas of modern and ancient life. Most people have
been in one, either for a wedding or at world class sportng events, theme parks or major
music festvals. My involvement comes from spending the last 40 years designing, building
and installing these monster structures around the world. Although I started with very litle in
terms of money, equipment and experience in 1978, I was fortunate to be around, many years
later, when the opportunity came along to build what I believe to be the largest single truly
portable structure ever built. This descripton is in comparison to small span modular struc-
tures which can be extended indefnitely. If someone has a need to group hundreds of smaller
tents together, then they would end up with more foor space, but not in a single structure.
I believe this structure, the Valhalla, is stll the largest example of ephemeral architecture
available for hire in the modern world.

The modern tent such as the Valhalla isnt very far removed from its ancestor, even though
tents may be considered the oldest form of man made structure. When man frst moved out
of his cave, his frst house will have been animal hides stretched over small branches. Three
million years later, we, as tentmakers and erectors, are stll dragging their equivalent around
with us, so we may justfably call ourselves the second oldest profession.

This book, The Sky Is Not The Limit, is intended to be the frst of 3 tent related books. The
book describes the industry background, development and use of the largest temporary struc-
tures for events in the world. These structures are primarily used to house the spectacle.

The second, The Book Of Tents covers all kinds of tented structures and provides an in depth
appraisal of the design, analysis, manufacture and installaton of tension fabric structures.

The third, Tents and Events is a reference on all aspects of temporary installatons, stages,
seatng grandstands, tented structures, exhibiton vehicles and an overview of health and
safety issues of all of those.

This book also describes the history of tents as magnifcent buildings, as symbols of power
and as inspiraton for spectacular architecture. There have been descriptons of historical tents
used for public gatherings since the tme of the Romans and before, but the precise details of
what size they were and how many people they accommodated is not clear except in certain
cases. Those cases that I have found are fascinatng so I am making a stab at recreatng those
structures from the ancient texts and have drawn them using my best guess in 3D to visualise
them and run them through the analysis sofware to see how efectve the designs are.
While there is no doubt from reading the ancient texts that although these were magnifcent
structures they were primitve in design and undoubtedly used the basic materials available
at the tme, and certainly there were no synthetc materials around then! The tent has since
developed from those simple but wonderful days into the state of the art portable venues we
know today that can house many of the worlds largest gatherings and media events.
Rudi Enos
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The Valhalla Tensile 1 structure as used at the MTV Europe Awards in Rome, Italy 2004
The Valhalla Tensile 1 structure as used at the Soul Survivor religious festival