Cafeteria Tensile Structure

An open courtyard next to a canteen is wasted space for much of the year — too hot at lunchtime, unusable in the rain. Roofing it with a membrane canopy converts it into usable covered seating while keeping what makes a courtyard pleasant: daylight, open sides and cross-ventilation. That is a better outcome for a dining space than an enclosed, air-conditioned extension.

Ekra Decor’s scope covered the canopy end to end — survey of the courtyard, 3D design of the membrane and its steel supports, fabrication, and installation and tensioning. With no area or programme figures in the archive, this page keeps the description general.

The design problem in a courtyard is to get a clear roof over the seating while working around the walls and the building that enclose it. The membrane is form-found in 3D and carried on a light steel frame that lands on the courtyard perimeter or against the surrounding structure, keeping the dining floor as open as possible.

Double curvature does the structural work: pre-stressing the fabric into a saddle or cone shape keeps it taut and stable in wind and gives it a positive fall so rain runs off to defined points rather than ponding. The steelwork is designed to IS 800 and the canopy is checked for wind and rain loads to the applicable Indian codes. Next to a heritage building, the connections are detailed to be reversible and to add as little load as possible to the old fabric.

A translucent membrane keeps the covered courtyard bright and daylit rather than gloomy, which matters for a space that is mostly used by day.

The steel is fabricated and hot-dip galvanised in the workshop and the membrane is cut and welded into panels off-site, so on-site work is limited to fixing the supports, erecting the frame and tensioning the fabric — quick, and low-impact on the surrounding building.

In a working establishment the canopy goes up around the cafeteria’s meal-time schedule, with the courtyard fenced off and handed back as a finished, shaded space.

The courtyard became a usable dining space in any weather — shaded at lunchtime, dry in the monsoon, and still open and naturally ventilated. The canopy needs only periodic cleaning and a routine check of its fixings and cable tensions.

Ekra Decor builds courtyard and cafeteria canopies and custom fabric structures for institutional and hospitality clients. See more finished work on the projects page.