Full Circle
The Big Top Reimagined
MMLV (Ricardo Muñoz, Andrew McGee + Rachel Lima Villalta) | February 2013
The tent as an ephemeral object has long captured the imagination of society. It’s flexibile and temporary; it wears its heart on its sleave. Indeed, history has witnessed tents so grand in color, texture, and size as to rival the most decorated permanent structures. No tent has embodied this grandeur in the American imagination quite like the Circus Tent. “The Big Top,” as the main event space of traveling circuses came to be known, was an instant hit; its striped canopies, flamboyant and loud, drew crowds from miles around, willing to pay the price of admission to marvel at what lay behind the nomadic veil. It’s premise operated around a simple gestalt: a circular ring in which
fantastic events could be enjoyed in the round. The Street Fair operates in stark contrast to the Circus. Arranged linearly to maximize access to vendors selling their wares, the Street Fair tent does not require an admission fee; its profit is turned in the products bought while meandering its lenghty paths. But the open access of this model often lacks the camraderous gathering space that the
circus ring so effectively provides. FULL CIRCLE proposes to combine the successful elements of The Circus and Street Fair typologies into a hybrid tent that supports both free and linear access as well as circular gathering and event spaces. Lifting the tent off the ground and hanging it from a lightweight frame allows the ground plane to remain free for crowd movement and
vendor access, while also creating a unique canopy condition that filters light, provides shade, and frames the city and its surroundings through the occuli of the ring openings. These openings not only create interesting light and viewing conditions for visitors to the fair, but also territorialize certain moments of each module into a space flexible for crowd gathering and large event execution.
