Push & Pull

"Nature," says Buckminster Fuller, "always builds the most economic structures." With his geodesic dome now in wide use (e.g., at the U.S. exhibition in Moscow last summer), Bucky Fuller has delved into the geometry that underlies nature's structures from the atom to the planetary system, to produce two more pioneering ideas. Last week they were on view in the floodlighted garden of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art.

One is a cantilevered truss made up of tetrahedrons (four-sided pyramids) and octahedrons (eight-sided figures), which looks like something made by a giant playing with an Erector set. Made of lightweight aluminum tubes, the "octet" truss cantilevers outward 60 ft. from a single support, weighs only 3 lbs. per sq. ft. v. some 100 lbs. for a comparable structure in conventional steel beams.

Nearby is an even more ethereal structure, a "tensegrity" (tension-integrity) mast, made of Monel wire and aluminum tubes, which stands 36 ft. high and weighs only 90 lbs. Bucky's "mast" has the makings of a revolution in architecture, because it puts the horizontal steel-in tension principles that apply to suspension bridges into a vertical context. The wires, in a state of tension, keep the mast unbending and rigid. The aluminum tubes, arranged like pairs of end-to-end coat hangers (see cut), push the wires apart to keep them taut. An exact balance of push-and-pull makes the tower stand.

The tensegrity mast is an ideal, lightweight kingpost from which to sling hovering floors or soaring ceilings. The octet truss can be extended in any of twelve directions, used whenever a light and inexpensive space frame is needed to span great distances. "Right now," says Bucky, "the truss and mast together could be made to bridge the Grand Canyon."

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