Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the annual Coachella Music & Arts Festival continues to grow as one of the largest and most recognizable festivals around.

Dating back to a Pearl Jam concert held on the property in 1993, the show eventually developed into the official music festival in 1999. Over the last two decades, Coachella has hosted over 2,400 performers from a wide variety of genres and has since grown into a multi-day, multi-weekend event.

Held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA, the festival ground’s footprint is over 640 acres! Attracting 400,000+ visitors over the course of 2 three-day weekends in April, Coachella has become the perfect environment for media, influencers, and brand activations.

Now in its 3rd year as Coachella’s tech sponsor, Hewlett-Packard (HP) worked with the award-winning Infinity Marketing Team, to come up with a new concept for this year’s event. Infinity Marketing, who’s worked with Stretch Shapes before on projects like ‘The Armadillo‘ at the Panorama Music Festival in New York City, reached out to see what we could create together.

With the goal to improve brand recognition and create an interactive experience, HP & Infinity were interested in expanding their existing festival design to incorporate a cool, refreshing outdoor area. Infinity knew they were looking for a unique Shade Structure and sent over ideas and inspirations; our teams went back & forth over the course of a week to finalize designs. In the end, Infinity loved the design and our team enjoyed balancing the client’s goals and ideas with a fun, creative design process.

The final design was a 45′ x 70′ Custom Shade Structure – using a combination of 36 Flat Panel Sails in 7 rainbow colors, and Pull Over Truss Covers in fiery red and bright white to help define the structure’s frame. The result was a vibrant, inviting patio for attendees to explore, providing both the functional need for shade and airflow, while staying on-brand with HP’s messaging.

Setup for events like Coachella can be tricky – working with the climate, environment, and hundreds of vendors on the festival grounds – so Stretch Shapes’ highly experienced install crew was on-site, overseeing the two-day setup and successfully collaborating with other event professionals and vendors as needed.

Ultimately, the addition of the HP Patio gave festival-goers a shady respite where they could express their creativity – a key part of the ‘Dreamland’ experience, and a memorable location within the festival.