Exploring Tensegrity
August 5–7

Informal Mathematics Education is an active field of mathematics education that focuses on how mathematical ideas are learned in museums, community centers, and extracurricular school-based activities. Such interactions with mathematics have the potential to transform cultural perceptions of mathematics, leading to a renewed conception of mathematics as an accessible and creative field, interconnected not only to science and engineering but also to art, history, craft, architecture, music, and beyond.

The art of Kenneth Snelson has been the object of study by artists, mathematicians, and scientists since its appearance in the early 1950s. The late artist and designer Tom Flemons wrote:

“Tensegrities appear to defy gravity but also definition. They can be art objects and geometric oddities, but also structures that can model complex systems.”

The main ingredients of a tensegrity structure are struts, which are components that sustain compression along their length, and cables, which can exert a tensile force when stretched. When the forces on these elements are in balance, the combined objects form a stable structure. R. Buckminster Fuller took the words tensile integrity and mashed them up to give us the term tensegrity.

At this conference we will explore tensegrity as structures to build, objects to admire from which we can learn complex ideas, and a method to lead design in architecture.

Reading:

• Amy C. Edmondson: Fuller and Tensegrity, from A Fuller Explanation, Birkhäuser, Boston, Inc., 1987
• Kenneth Snelson: Tensegrity, Weaving, and the Binary World

Further information about the conference can be obtained from John McCleary at mccleary@vassar.edu.