Happy Christmas from all at Elliott Wood – Latest

This year our Christmas card featured the ‘TensegriTree’ constructed by engineers from our London and Wimbledon offices.

Tensegrity or ‘Tension-Integrity’ was known as the lightest structure since the 1960s invented by Buckminster Fuller. It is supported by discontinuous struts connected by only tension wire. All the branches, made from hard wood dowels are suspended separately in a cotton string mesh.

The geometry was produced parametrically and tested for stability with a custom grasshopper script. This allowed us to play with many variations and produce information to build scale test models. The connection detail was refined to allow adjustment and be as simple as possible. It is formed from plastic tubing and doesn’t require any glue or turnbuckles to adjust the tension.

The finished tree is 2m tall, 1.5m wide and approximately only 2kg! Possibly the lightest tree of its size ever!…

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.