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Billed as “the world’s greatest celebration of motorsport and car culture,” the Goodwood Festival of Speed takes place each summer on the famous grounds of Goodwood House in West Sussex, England. A 17th-century estate seems an unlikely place to stage a motorsport festival, but it is one of the most prestigious racing events in the world. Since its founding in 1993, the festival has grown to attract 200,000 attendees who come from all over the world to see an incredible collection of historic vehicles, motorbikes, rally cars, supercars, NASCAR and the latest Formula One machines take part in the famous Hillclimb as well as other exciting events.
TenTen Crew, based in London, England, and run by Nicholaas and Adrian Van Breda, is responsible for providing the 20-by-25-meter Röder HTS Manhattan tent used for the four-day festival. “This project has a short time frame with an extremely high finish standard, meaning that there is little margin for error,” explains Nicholaas. “Come rain or shine we had to work through and get the job done.”
The short schedule meant TenTen’s crew of 10 worked 12 hours a day to get the job done in just seven days. And it was no ordinary tent the company installed. “It has an insulated, inflatable roof,” Adrian says. “There was also a hidden facade around the top of the structure so you could not see it was a tent. It looked just like a showroom.”
And of course, no high-end showroom would be complete without a turntable to rotate a car on. But installing that feature would not be possible on a traditional floor.
“We needed the floor to be strong enough to hold the weight of the show cars as well as the people,” says Adrian. “We used a heavy deck floor with a specialized steel jack system that allowed for a car turntable as well as multiple cars to be located inside
the structure.”
In addition to the customized branding, the outside of the tent also featured an enormous 5-by-6-meter television screen, creating a visual spectacle that could compete with the overwhelming number and variety of vehicles at
the event.
Despite the short time frame and the complexity of the install, TenTen’s crew delivered truly stunning results. The level of detail and quality resulted in a structure that was indistinguishable from a traditional permanent building. But while attendees were impressed, Nicholaas was not at all surprised with the results. “We specialize in building that structure,” he says proudly.
And just four days after the event was over, the structure had vanished from the estate grounds completely, as though it were never there.
By the numbers:
5,400 square feet of tented space
200,000 guests
10 crew members
7 days for set up
4 days for tear down