Every so often, I come across an image in some design-centric corner of the Internet that stops me mid-scroll. Sometimes it's a picture of singer-songwriter Frank Ocean lying on a massive $150,000 sofa or the countertop of writer Joan Didion's California kitchen. This time, the photo that caught my eye was of a booming outdoor tent sitting inside a homey living room.
That small planet of saffron-yellow nylon is the "Geodome 4 Tent," manufactured by outdoor retailer the North Face. It costs $2,000 and stands nearly seven feet tall. Previously, the design was mainly sold in Japan and Korea and only made available in the United States in 2019. (It is currently sold out on the North Face's North American website, but there are plenty to be found on eBay, mostly from Japanese sellers.) One might assume no camping tent is more covetable than the next, but the Geodome 4 has a small-yet-feverish following. The American release was covered in publications like Hypebeast and Highsnobiety as if it was a buzzy streetwear drop—and the North Face produced a limited-edition version in collaboration with the certifiably cool fashion shop Dover Street Market.
The Geodome 4 Tent, with indoor mode activated; Courtesy of @dwell_lab_family.
That tent-in-living-room photo that caught my eye came from Dwell Lab, a Japanese design workshop that, according to a rough Google translation, "deals with various things related to life." The official website is packed with blog posts about renovation projects, and their Instagram is full of smaller projects, like a Donald Judd-inspired daybed and a slant-roof chicken coop. One of the captions notes the tent "fits perfectly in a tatami room of four and a half tatami mats, which is outstandingly good." It sounds like the tent was added to this house to act as a guest room of sorts, offering a nylon screen of privacy from the rest of the home.
The Geodome 4 is built to "expedition standards." It has five main poles and a single equator pole, and is made from dual-layer water-resistant material that can handle winds up to 60 mph. Once assembled, the tent comfortably sleeps four with an interior tall enough to stand in. The North Face introduced its geodesic tent design in 1975, citing eccentric American architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller as the inspiration. In 1966, The New Yorker described Fuller as "an engineer, inventor, mathematician, architect, cartographer, philosopher, poet, cosmogonist, and comprehensive designer." He was indeed all of those things, but inserting the geodesic dome into American design language was his crowning, complex-sphered achievement.
Just last week, less than a month after I saw that first photo, a similar-looking geodesic tent (and I do think I spy a tiny North Face logo) popped up on my feed yet again. This time it was in a feature posted by Dwell, the modern homes magazine. (No relation to Dwell Lab). You can spot the tent on the roof and deck of a picturesque property located in the Chichibu mountain range, nearly three hours northwest of Tokyo. The place is a weekend retreat—half house, half campsite—for two designers who work for an outdoors company. The sprawling wooden structure, designed by Shin Ohori, is stunning on its own, but the two yellow tents somehow steal the show.
The Geodome 4 and others like it are a double threat: a portable room that you can move indoors or outdoors, whichever best suits your current needs. It’s a tent embraced by those with a penchant for both outdoor adventure and mid-century futurism. And above all, it’s for those who love great, geometrically complex design.
