tensegrityn.
/tɛnˈsɛɡrɪti/ A stable three-dimensional structure consisting of members under tension that are contiguous and members under compression that are not; the characteristic property of such a structure; also figurative. Frequently attributive.
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the world > relative properties > number > geometry > shape or figure > [noun] > three-dimensional > tensigrity
tensegrity1959
1959 Art News Oct. 29 Of all the ways out of the blind alley in which so much of modern architecture luxuriously relaxes, R. Buckminster Fuller's ‘tensegrity’ structures seem the most inventive and promising.
1963 R. B. Fuller Ideas & Integrities viii. 170 We have in the Geodesic Tensegrity (my name for the discontinuous-compression, continuous-tension structures) the ability to assemble unprecedentedly large, clear-span structures.
1972 Last Whole Earth Catal. (Portola Inst.) 4/3 The Universe is a tensegrity.
1976 A. Pugh Introd. Tensegrity ii. 11 One of the most impressive Tensegrity figures has six struts which do not touch one another and twenty~four tendons.
1976 H. Kenner Geodesic Math p. viii No useful structures exploiting pure Tensegrity—tension wholly separated from compression—have been built.
1976 Sci. Amer. Dec. 144/1 The Kenner book..derives the very nature of a geodesic dome..as the limiting case of a more complex skin of simple tensegrities.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1986; most recently modified version published online March 2019).
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n.1959