The design principle that is tensegrity is based on tension and on the integrity that results from the application of that tension.

Tension is the opposite of compression … piling concrete blocks on top of concrete blocks is a compression technique. We are not interested in compression!

Tensegrity is a portmanteau word derived from the words tensional and integrity.

Richard Buckminster Fuller (July 12th, 1895 – July 1st, 1983) was an American architect, designer and inventor credited with coining the term in the 1960s.

He was a visionary, an inventor and a futurist … and he is also credited with popularising, rather than inventing, the geodesic dome in the 1940s.

tensegrity.uk

I didn’t realise that I was interested in tensegrity until the YouTube algorithm genies decided that I should stop wasting my time on maths and politics; I should be watching someone building a table out of a couple of old pallets and some chains.

Before I knew what was happening, I had amassed a substantial collection of YouTube videos teaching me how to construct impossible tables out of old pallets and some chains.

I wanted one!

I searched the internet with my friend Google … and we pretty much drew a blank.

I had another go and I searched for:

tensegrity table

floating table

floating compression table

impossible table

I found gallons of enthusiasm and loads of instructions on how to make one … but I found nowhere for me to buy one!

I’m sure that I am not alone.

I want to create a tensegrity home, at tensegrity.uk.

Without a doubt, there are some amazing tensegrity constructions and we want to showcase as many as we can here.

We will be writing features and we will be discussing the merits of different designs. We will host a gallery of tensegrity projects and we will provide links to instructional videos so that you can build your own. If you don’t want to get busy in the workshop, we can help you to find the products you would like to buy and make the purchases that you want to make.