"The word 'tensegrity' is an invention: a contraction of 'tensional integrity.' Tensegrity describes a structural-relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compressional member behaviors. Tensegrity provides the ability to yield increasingly without ultimately breaking or coming asunder."
[From Synergetics, p. 372.]
This tensegrity sculpture at the Hirshorn gallery at the Smithsonian museum
is called "Needle Tower" and is by the american sculptor Kenneth Snelson.
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See its .pov file if you want to generate this image.
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Christopher J. Fearnley doing something.
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This is a another photo of the tensegrity sculpture which stands outside of the
Simthsonian Institute in Washington D.C. in the United States. As I
was walking away from taking the previous photo, I noticed a bare spot
in the grass underneath the sculpture. Curious, I stood on that spot
and looked up, and was rewarded with the view you can see here.
* jpg photos taken by Chris Rywalt (crywalt@tinman.dev.prodigy.com)