Portable Palaces: Royal Tents and Timber Lodgings 1509-1603

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Tents represent a critical part of the architectural canon spanning both centuries and civilizations but are often overlooked in favour of those buildings that have left a longer-lasting mark on their surroundings. In the introduction to his 1979 book, Tents: Architecture of the Nomads, Torvald Faegre wrote that 'In a sense, tents are the truest architecture: our word architect comes from the Greek archi, "one who directs" and tectos, the "weaving"'. The feting of the late Pritzker Prize winning architect Frei Otto, whose 1972 tensile canopy for the Munich Olympic Stadium is still considered one of the landmarks of world architecture and an apogee of tent construction, demonstrates that tents can be some of the most futuristic and sophisticated building types. However, most tents fulfil a much more basic function for, as Faegre's Tents (1979) reminds us, they also have the capacity to serve a primal need for shelter and flexibility of situation. For many casual observers tents are simply resonant of camping holidays but the stereotype that this conjures distracts from the significance of the tent as a structure that is able to embody messages of both libertarianism and authoritarianism in a single object. Accordingly the architecture critic Tom Dyckhoff, summed up his thoughts on the importance of tents in his 2014 BBC documentary Tents: The Beginnings of Architecture by saying, 'stitched into the fabric of all tents is a defiant streak; they are a rebellious force in both architecture and society at large' ('Tents - The Beginning of Architecture', The Culture Show. BBC2. 24 July 2014). This project considers the tent as an important expression of architecture at an earlier point of apogee through a study of the design of the royal tents and associated temporary structures that were built for the sixteenth-century English court by the Office of Tents and Revels. In doing so it responds to all three of the themes cited above - those of sophistication, itinerancy and symbolism - and pushes the boundaries of our current understanding of early modern architecture and, by association, politics. The project is timed to underpin preparations for the 500th anniversary of the Field of Cloth of Gold in 2020, an event that arguably defined the importance of tents and temporary structures as a tool of European monarchy in the period and as an outlet for creativity in architecture and design. However, the project spreads its net wider than that single event to review the role of the royal tent across the whole period from the accession of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I. Supporting the project is a rich vein of evidence that includes paintings and drawings, account books, inventories, chronicles, furniture and surviving fragments said to be from royal tents that has never before been collated and reviewed as a whole. By doing so this project will both highlight the important role played by tents in European diplomacy and will demonstrate that the Office of Tents and Revels employed renowned craftsmen whose work on temporary structures playfully and experimentally pushed the boundaries of architectural and decorative design at a time widely acknowledged as a great period of development in English architectural history. The project will culminate in the construction of a recreated royal tent that will act as a piece of experimental archaeology or practice-based research and a high-impact way of engaging broad audiences with the themes of architecture, power and magnificence at the Tudor courts.