Why the heck would a company that makes office chairs make a tent? If we had to guess, it’s all the work from-home-arrangements that cropped up during the pandemic, some of which look like they will remain permanent going forward. For people who still haven’t figured out how to carve out a private workspace in their homes, the Steelcase Pod Tent looks like a potentially effective way to simply pitch one.
Billed as a “comfortable, private working environment,” it’s a literal tent designed to accommodate a small workspace, giving folks a walled-off space even in the middle of a busy home or office. Need a home office that you can tell your kids not to enter during the day? Pitch this over your desk and it could do the trick. Want to turn the recliner chair in the living room into your personal work-from-home space? Throw up this tent over the chair and you’ve got yourself a partitioned workspace.
The Steelcase Pod Tent is a tall tent with a circular floor area, measuring 92 inches tall and 76 inches diameter at the base. It has the shape of a jug that gets wider in the middle and tapers of at the top, too, making it quite an affable sight that just might not look that out of place inside your home. The whole thing is set up like an outdoor tent, with exposed aluminum frames serving as the structure and integrated connection points holding it together. The tent fabric is attached to those connection points as well via built-in loops in the fabric.
It has a large opening that allows folks to freely enter and leave the tent, all while allowing air to flow freely to keep the air circulating. The tent top is also open, so your home’s AC and heating should be able to keep you comfortable even while inside the tent. Of course, that also means you’re not immune to ambient noises, but the tent, at least, eliminates much of the visual distractions.
The Steelcase Pod Tent has enough room inside to fit most basic home office setups. You can throw a small desk and an office chair in there, for instance, along with any gear and supplies you need. You can also just put a single-seater couch or recliner if you prefer working on that, as well as a round bar table and a bar stool if you prefer something even more barebones. Basically, the space should give you enough options that you’re not stuck to one type of set up. In case you need to run power cables to the tent, by the way, it’s got built-in cutouts at the bottom, so you can keep the cable mess away from the door openings.
Unfortunately, setting up the tent isn’t that easy. According to the product page, they recommend assembly be done by two people, both of whom can put the tent together in under an hour. Yep, an entire hour with two people involved, so it’s not the kind of tent you’ll set up and take down on the daily.
The Steelcase Pod Tent is available now.