Typologie: The Camping Tent

Collections Typologie

Following the launch of the latest Typologie book, for which I was commissioned to research and write a survey of the sociopolitical history of the camping tent, co-founder Thélonious Goupil and I began developing an exhibition to map out the publication's research.

With the help of photographer Alberto Strada and Italian tent manufacturer Ferrino, we assembled the exhibit for the 2026 Salone del Mobile in Milan to present a selection of scale models tracing the evolution of tent design. By bringing diverse tent forms together in a comparative format, the exhibition made the technological and political complexity of a familiar object immediately legible.

The exhibition was composed across two walls, opening with the camping tent's early formation as a response to the British Industrial Revolution, then diverging into the parallel histories of alpinism and leisure camping, the two primary sectors that have driven most of tent development over the years.

This presentation included historical models on loan from designers Bruce Hamilton and Bob Gillis of The North Face, alongside pieces from Ferrino, Attis, and the personal archive of designer Shigeki Fujishiro. These models were further accompanied by a documentary filmed at the Acome factory in China by photographers Kaley Clements and Junyi Yu for Typologie, shedding light on the contemporary realities of industrial tent manufacturing.