Winning tent design

Providing a hospitality venue for America’s Cup was a race to the finish for HTS–USA.

As the oldest international sporting trophy, the America’s Cup attracts world–class sailors and yachts and the attention of sailing enthusiasts worldwide. And for the 34th America’s Cup, with events from July through September 2013 on San Francisco Bay, multiple tent and event specialists showed off their world–class structures and services.

HTS–USA/Hocker Clearspan Structures was asked to supply a structure as beautiful and intelligently designed and engineered as the vessels in the competition, says Jeff McInnes, North American sales manager. The result was a two–story, 750–square–meter Manhattan–style structure dubbed America’s Cup Club 72.

“The structure had to have a cutting–edge aesthetic inside and out, offering defined exterior and interior spaces for entertainment, hospitality, event viewing, sail team and sponsor office areas, and specialty pop–up stores, such as the Louis Vuitton Boutique just inside the main entrance,” McInnes says.

The 25–by–30–meter structure featured a Manhattan–style low slope thermo roof; HTS Avantgarde style windows, doors and hard wall; cassette flooring; and second–level covered deck areas. HTS and the client, Condit Exhibits, collaborated on a variety of layouts to meet every criteria of the America’s Cup committee.

The build location, at the end of a pier, was a concern. The site was under the authority of multiple jurisdictions and, with unobstructed winds from three directions, required wind load capacity above and beyond the baseline code for San Francisco. HTS commissioned an engineering study of the site that identified every multiplier that could add to wind pressure on the structure and extrapolated the worst–case scenario wind load criteria. Such due diligence was worth it, as the company’s findings matched the requirements presented by code officials.

Once the design was settled, engineering and manufacturing was a race worthy of the event itself—HTS had 10 weeks from the date of order to have the finished product on–site. In the end, HTS proved itself a winner by taking home a 2013 IAA Outstanding Achievement Award for tent manufacturing and design for this structure.