Editing Tensegrity (section)

== Early example ==
[[File:In16695.jpg|upright|thumb|left|The [[Skylon (Festival of Britain)|Skylon]] at the [[Festival of Britain]], 1951]]

A conceptual building block of tensegrity is seen in the 1951 [[Skylon (Festival of Britain)|Skylon]]. Six [[wire rope|cable]]s, three at each end, hold the tower in position. The three cables connected to the bottom "define" its location. The other three cables are simply keeping it vertical.

A three-rod tensegrity structure (shown above in a spinning drawing of a T3-Prism) builds on this simpler structure: the ends of each green rod look like the top and bottom of the Skylon. As long as the angle between any two cables is smaller than 180°, the position of the rod is well defined. While three cables are the minimum required for stability, additional cables can be attached to each node for aesthetic purposes and for [[Redundancy (engineering)|redundancy]]. For example, [[Kenneth Snelson]]'s [[Needle Tower]] uses a repeated pattern built using nodes that are connected to 5 cables each.

[[Eleanor Heartney]] points out visual transparency as an important aesthetic quality of these structures.<ref>{{ citation | first = Eleanor | last = Hartley | chapter = Ken Snelson and the Aesthetics of Structure | publisher = Marlborough Gallery | type = exhibition catalogue | title = Kenneth Snelson: Selected Work: 1948–2009 | date = 19 February - 21 March 2009 }}</ref> Korkmaz ''et al.'' has argued that lightweight tensegrity structures are suitable for [[adaptive architecture]].<ref name="korkmaz1">{{harvnb|Korkmaz|Bel Hadj Ali|Smith|2011}}</ref><ref name="korkmaz2">{{harvnb|Korkmaz|Bel Hadj Ali|Smith|2012}}</ref>

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