Jan Portheine
KarTent
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Meet KarTent. Jan Portheine make cardboard tents for festivals to reduce waste at campsites. Next to that they will also be launching other cardboard products for festivals and amaze everybody what is possible with cardboard.
Jan Portheine
I am Jan, 24 years old and live in Amsterdam. Exactly one year ago I graduated from the Technical University of Delft. I studied Architecture and for my graduation I did research in using cardboard as a construction material and made a cardboard beach house for the government to reduce dune erosion. During my graduation I came across a picture of a festival camping of Glastonbury after the festival. I was extremely shocked by the amount of tents that were left behind on the picture. It seems that 1 out of every 4 festival campers leaves their tent behind what in the Netherlands alone already results in 25.000 tents each year! Together with Wout Kommer we wanted to solve this problem with, you might already guess it, cardboard!
I had all the needed knowledge and contacts to quickly develop a prototype. We had our first tent in two weeks’ time. My student dorm was where we placed our first tents underneath a shower. Until we found one that worked and with that tent we went to (my very first) festival. At the festivals where we sold these tents we got lots of feedback from people who bought it. With this we could improve our product. For instance now our tent only has one door instead of two because people said it felt more like a tunnel than a tent. Something you will not realize during designing but only during actual test.
We are Kartent and we make cardboard tents for festivals to reduce waste at campsites. Next to that we will also be launching other cardboard products for festivals but also a child’s version of our tent. This because lots of mothers wanted a tent for their children. At this moment we are active in more than 10 countries and have transported lots of cardboard throughout Europe. This year we will be doing around 85 events in the BeNeLux ourselves and the numbers are well in the thousands. We want to amaze everybody what is possible with cardboard and we think that we are well on our way to do this!
Do you love the story of Jan? Do you love cardboard? Claim your gift beneath this story and you’ll make chance to join his workshop ‘Create new things with used cardboard’! There is room for twenty people so don’t hestitate too long…
