Tensioned Relaxations by Synthesis Design + Architecture (SDA) is a series of temporary deploy-able outdoor structures, that aim to reinvent the typical street fair tent through their combination of dynamic form, optical effects, aesthetics and variable configurations. Every structure has a uniquely sensual, continuous form made of a tensioned HDPE Mesh skin, overlapped with great artwork by urban artists at SA Studios / SA-UP Collective and a perimeter ring made of fiberglass rod.

Playful effect of the outdoor piece of art is conceived in synergy of structure’s organic form, perforated mesh and silk-screened skin. The structure is surely providing striking graphic identity to New York’s Street Fest – it enables numerous configurations to accommodate a multiplicity of activities, while encouraging visual and spatial interaction. The colorful urban attraction accommodates wide range of activities, from vendors, workshop areas, outdoor classrooms, demonstrations, installations, music to other performances and exhibitions.

The form of this street jewel was developed in a parallel process of both analogue and digital form-finding, in order to explore behavior of the active materials of both composite tensioned membrane skins – relaxed meshes and bending active frames. The structure is actually designed as an extension of the legacy of Frei Otto’s seminal lightweight tensioned membrane structures, and due to the form, the piece is both efficient and effective. The ring made of fiberglass is deformed into shape by the tailoring of skin which binds it; therefore the frame pushes out while the skin pulls in and creates form-force equilibrium – lightweight, cost-efficient and easy to assemble.