Recently Sjoberg's group explored inflated membranes with internal tensional components.
The goal of Workshop One was to develop a canopy system based on the principles of nonlinear tensegrity pioneered by Buckminster Fuller, Frei Otto and Kenneth Snelson. The focus however wasn’t on the product, so much as the development of a system or design strategy - a “design tool” as Obuchi sensei prefers to call it - which allows a variety of different formal results to be derived from small manipulations to a basic material logic. While we all took different meaning from these precedents, some holding closer to a traditional definition of tensegrity than others, for my own project I looked at inflatable membrane systems which utilize in effect only two materials, plastic sheeting and air, as the respective tensile and compressive, force-bearing elements. This simple relationship was then expanded into a design system by controlling how and where the two exterior membranes were joined by interior connection points (connected with double sided tape), producing an overall change to the form of the inflated system (I know it’s not very sexy, but think air mattress). From a variety of samples, general patterns and reactions could be learned and later put to use in the formal design of the canopy.
While they are clearly inspired by tensegrity, and name their exploration pneumatic tensegrity, I think the isolation of tensegrity is not sufficiently "islanded compression" to match our use of the term in this blog. That does not detract from the importance of this work, or its beauty.
Links:
http://archinect.com/lostinpermutation/workshop-one
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