The Gaping Flaws of Recent Concert Stage Design

Terrifying. As a music lover, I undoubtedly would have been up in the front row, and may not have been so lucky. Take a look at the structure though. If you're familiar with structural design, or if you've ever even looked at a bridge before, you can probably figure out that the almighty triangle is critical to any structural design. I don't personally know the design intent, but I do see a few glaring faults consistent with each stage that I hope the music industry can learn from.

Look, I understand how great it is to have a great light show, and all of the bells and whistles within a concert, but safety should always be a number one priority with any form of structural design. Each of the concert stages that have collapsed this year were huge in all 3 dimensions. This is especially apparent if you look at the stage collapse at a concert in Indiana shown above. The large amount of area these concert stages cover make for a lot of area for wind to push on. Each stage twisted after a strong gust of wind hit, which also suggests that the vertical supports were not tied together properly.

Did you see it? The Pukkelpop stage fails at a weak intersection between the top of the vertical brace, and the horizontal brace that runs across the top. If they would have added 2 diagonal braces from corner to corner at the top, combined that with stronger materials, and made the entire thing just a little shorter Pukkelpop's stage probably would have never collapsed.

Yes, I'm well aware, you can't control crappy weather. Although most of the time people do know when weather is going to get ugly. I would like to assume that the people who manage these events do pay enough attention to the weather to see when there is going to be a potential storm, or high wind thread coming through, and plan accordingly. If you could replace the vertical supports for a concert stage with shorter ones for bad weather, why not do it? In fact, the weather should be checked at the latest moment to get the most accurate idea of what the weather is going to be like. If there is any doubt about the weather's condition, the smaller stage should be used in favor of the taller one.

Stage collapses will always be a risk for the concert-goers everywhere. The glorifying show that we go to see will always have some amount of danger to it, but we can always hope that there can be a better balance of price, portability, and safety with time. If you're really worried about it, stick to the side stage, or stick with going to events at structurally-sound Pavilions. I guess you could even just stay away from the stage, too.

What do you think of the events that have happened this year? Do you think they were preventable? If so, how? Leave your creative thoughts and responses in the comment section below.