www tower

the www tower is a tensegrity structure made from three continuous over lapping 'www' shaped beams which are separated but held together by tension cables.

the structure is built from rigid compression members held together by pin joints and isolated by tension cables.  the greater the tension in the cables, the more rigid the overall structure becomes with an increased capacity to carry load.

the tower structure is similar to the lattice slab structures developed by Reno Motro.

the structure can be easily assembled or collapsed as required and can be utilised for portable or deployable structures.  the structure also has the potential to be articulated like a prehensile tail by using actuators to vary the tensioning in each line.

this type of structure can be viewed at both the micro and macro scale.  it could be used for large scale building structures or at the micro level, compressive members in a tensegrity structure - of this or any other configuration - could be decomposed into an assembly of smaller and smaller compressive members.