Designing the Beat: Kuchar Elevates iHeartMedia’s Artist Tent at Lollapalooza 2025

With Kuchar's hometown serving as the perfect backdrop, designing iHeartMedia’s Artist Tent for Lollapalooza 2025 was a dream come true.

As Olivia Rodrigo’s vocals soared over Grant Park and festivalgoers filled the lawns, a rarely glimpsed backstage scene was buzzing with activity at Lollapalooza 2025. Inside the Artist Village — a tucked-away zone reserved for artists, crews, and press — iHeartMedia debuted a small but striking update to its backstage presence: a reimagined 10-by-10-foot interview tent, designed by Chicago studio Kuchar, that proved even the most compact spaces can leave a lasting impression.

Over the course of the weekend, artists like Tate McRae, Dominic Fike, Reneé Rapp, and The Kid LAROI stopped by to chat with iHeart’s Chicago stations — 103.5 KissFM, WGCI, and Rock 95.5 — inside a space transformed from utilitarian booth to shimmery, camera-ready hideaway. For Kuchar’s founder and creative director, Sarah Kuchar-Parkinson, the challenge wasn’t scale — it was intent.

“[iHeartMedia] reached out through a rep at KissFM,” she recalls, “and basically said, ‘We’ve had this tent in the Artist Village for years — but it’s never really felt designed. This year, we want to change that.’”

The tent’s mood board was unlike anything we’ve designed before… while also incorporating key Kuchar tenets of shape, color, and shine.

With just five weeks from project kickoff to install, the Kuchar team moved quickly. Their approach: treat the tent less like a temporary booth and more like a three-dimensional mood board — a small but highly curated space that could flex across genres, read well on camera, and make artists feel instantly energized just by stepping inside.

“I first started going to Lolla about 15 years ago, and it’s been so cool to see it come roaring back bigger and better than ever post-COVID,” says Kuchar-Parkinson. “It’s such a joyful mix of sounds, styles, and colors. You can see Korn and Sabrina Carpenter on the same weekend! That kind of genre clash, that electric energy, was our north star.”

Even in a small space, we prioritized color and texture to reflect the playful vibe of the festival.

Inside the tent, that inspiration came to life through a clever play of texture, light, and movement. Walls and ceilings were draped in a silver, satin-like theatrical fabric from Elite Custom Interiors — soft to the touch, but sharp in appearance. “This fabric has a beautiful, liquid chrome effect,” she says. “A little rock ‘n’ roll, a little glam — and it bounced light in a way that made everyone look amazing on camera.”

Overhead, paper lanterns modeled after the beach balls that get bounced over the crowds added a playful Lolla nod while also serving a functional role. “Each one of iHeart’s stations was assigned a lantern with their branding, so the team could swap them out depending on who was using the space,” Kuchar-Parkinson explains. “It kept the space flexible, while still feeling considered.”

These beach-ball-inspired paper lanterns also incorporated branding of various iHeartMedia radio stations.

That same duality — form and function — guided every inch of the design. The layout was intentionally minimal, with just two stools and plenty of open space to allow for fast-moving interviews and impromptu content creation. “They do both seated and standing interviews depending upon if it’s one artist or a group, so we wanted the setup to feel open and breathable for either scenario,” she says. “But also visually interesting from every angle.”

Like many festival installs, the tent came with last-minute challenges. The full specs weren’t provided until load-in, forcing the team to problem-solve on the fly. “We ended up using a retail grid system to suspend the lanterns and a rod rig for the drapery,” says Kuchar-Parkinson. “It was all hands on deck — but we pulled it off in under two hours.”

The installation of the tent was faster and a bit more chaotic than our typical installation…

but the result was worth it!

In the end, the tent lasted only a few days — but its design lived far longer, surfacing across artist socials, in iHeart content, and in the kind of fleeting, magical moments that define live music culture. “To be part of something I grew up loving — and to do it through the lens of design — was incredibly meaningful,” she says. “Even for a space this small, we wanted to prove that you can still make it feel special.”

To see a few of the artists who were interviewed in this Kuchar-designed space, check out 103.5 Kiss FM on Instagram.

Professional photography captured by Wittefini Photography