Creator of the world’s largest temporary structures releases book

Rudi Enos, the designer of some of the largest temporary structures ever used throughout the world, publishes his first book ‘The Sky is Not the Limit’ this month.

Enos’ constructions can be used as standalone structures or integrated into architectural designs.

Perhaps his best known creations are the distinctive multi-peaked Kayam structure, which he conceived in 1988, first deploying it at Glastonbury in 1992, and the Guinness World Record-holding Tensile 1, or Valhalla, mobile stadium, a 16 mast structure with a surface area of 14,510m2, equivalent to a 12,000 capacity arena.

He now runs Sheffield-based businesses, Rudi Special Structures Lab Ltd, serving the construction, entertainment and leisure industries.

The Sky is Not the Limit is the first in what Enos expects to be a series of three books, which will offer in-depth insight into the techniques of tent design and construction, and a reference into their use for constructions and events of every sort.

“Tents may be considered the oldest form of man-made structure,” says Enos. “When man first moved out of caves, his first house would have been animal hides stretched over small branches. This book describes the history of tents as magnificent buildings, as symbols of power and as inspiration for spectacular architecture.

"My involvement is obviously at the latter end of that time scale and comes from spending the last 40 years designing, building and installing these monster structures around the world. I was fortunate to be around when the opportunity came along to build what I believe to be the largest single truly portable structure ever built.”

The book explores the history of tents and temporary structures from the earliest times to the present day. After graduating in engineering in the early 1970s, Enos worked in the motor-racing industry with the Shadow Formula 1 team before joining the entertainment world in 1974 as a “rigger and dogsbody” with a variety show touring Asia.

After designing four stages for the Queen’s Jubilee in 1976 and building a stage used by Mohammed Ali in South Shields, he designed his first tent, a big top used at Glastonbury Festival in 1978. Since then he has designed a range of other structures used extensively throughout the UK and internationally.

As part of the book, Enos revisits and recreates in 21st century CAD, designs of legendary structures such as Henry VIII’s temporary palace in the Field of the Cloth of Gold and Kublai Khan’s portable palace.

He looks at the importance of fabric-covered structures as statements of status, power and glamour in societies; ranging from Ancient Rome, the Mongol Empire, Medieval and Victorian Britain, to today’s Glastonbury Festival.