Pitch Festival Inflatable Rejuvenation Station provides a refreshing reprieve for festival-goers.

Background

Pitch Festival is an annual EDM music and arts festival in Moyston, Victoria. With a strong emphasis on art and culture, the Pitch festival always looks for new and exciting ways to engage the community through commissioned spaces and artworks.

With multiple stages spread around the site pumping beats day and night, a need arose for a relaxing area for patrons to go and refresh for a reprieve from the Aussie heat and a place to sit and re-charge, a rejuvenation station.

The Design and Fabrication

The organic shape of the inflatable rejuvenation station emoted a living creature feeling or a space from another world. The ultimate design was a 13m long curved positive pressure structure. The entrance to the shelter was a simple airlock made from inflatable tubes pushed together to create a seal, encouraging those seeking repose to squeeze through the slit and enter and leave the hustle and bustle of the festival behind them.

Inside the air-conditioned space, a flowing white roof reflects the sun away while patrons relax in reclining chairs and listen to low-key music played by the DJ at the head of the structure. With an intentionally vague brief, many design iterations were considered. The design team at Giant Inflatables considered a simple dome bubble structure and a long straight form to maximize the allocated space.

The design direction changed to feature more artistic forms. The design team spent a lot of consideration on the entry to the space. It would be the aperture separating the outside from the inside. The stakeholders and designers chose a positive pressure structure over more traditional inflatable shelters for the excellent sound dampening qualities. The final product effectively blocked a large percentage of external noise.

The Results

The Inflatable Rejuvenation Station debuted at the Pitch festival in 2018 to the delight of the attendees. The space has been successfully reused at subsequent events and is now considered an essential location on the site.

The shelter exceeded expectations, with festival-goers filling the space continuously throughout the event, attracted to the calm and cool it would provide from the outside high-energy environment.