Tensegrity is about contrast

Tensegrity is about contrast, the union of compression and tension forming the "integrity" suffix of the term.

But today's web browsing brings other contrasts to mind: namely war and peace, conflict and coexistence.

The most extreme example is the Twin Towers' collapse, car bomb effects and tensegrity structural properties all on the same page--on a forum Iran. Only in Iran. You cannot make this stuff up. See it for yourself at the Iranian engineer's form hosted on IranSaze.com. I find today, on this page, http://iransaze.com/ftopict-504-tensegrity.html, the administrator posting in Persian :

• Analysis of Car-Bomb Effects on Buildings, by Astaneh-Asl, A., Heydari, C. and Zhao, Q.
• 9th Arab Structural Engineering Conference keynote by Astaneh-Asl, topic, "World Trade Center Collapse, Field Investigation and Analysis"
• Free-Standing Tension Structures: From Tensegrity Systems to Cable-Strut Systems, By Binbing Wang

Become.com is selling a DVD lecture by Scott Sonnon on Anatomy Trains, or myofascial tensegrity, here: http://www.become.com/rmax--richards-realm-movies-fltr---brand-html, just above a video on martial arts. Once again, war and peace.

That strange contrast of peace and war in mind, I stumble across this more mellow contrast of ceiling and floor, in a tensegrity project proposed by ABDR, at http://complexitys.com/uncategorized/about-tensegrity-abdr-architects/

The design is for the National Museum of Reggio Calabria in the south of Italy, in which the famous Bronzi di Riace will be exhibited. Tensegrity principle has been used for the structure of a walkable transparent glass – see image below. The structure design has been developed by the Italian engineer Loris Manfroni.

Thanks to HDA Paris for posting that link, and including this interesting video:



Things get weirder as we contrast reality versus virtual worlds (meatspace versus cyberspace). Consider along with "writch" who compares object oriented databases to tensegrity on his blog, http://blog.writch.com/2010/03/tensegrity.html,

The idea of a Relational Database (RDB) is that you keep just one of everything, in it's own table, and you join the tables to make sense of things. So, in a table about things you can do, you'll have an index number for every 'thing' and every 'do'. The name of the thing will be in another table (with it's index number), as will the name of the 'do' items. With Object Oriented programming, you make 'instances' of things that can make other 'instances' of things that point at each other and such.... The whole concept is just like building a tensegrity sphere.

Is all this contrast a coincidence? Of course. So we end on a page where a video lecture on "Coincidences" is on the playlist following an interview with biotensegrity pioneer Ingber, here http://vimeo.com/8722581

Tensegrity from SPTNK Observatory on Vimeo.