Ropes and Poles: Suspended Tensegrity Cube by 1st Halfway House Scouts

Photo courtesy Shane Anderson

1st Halfway House, a Scout troop in Midrand, South Africa, recently built this tensegrity cube suspended between A-frames. The cube is supsended at 4 points- two underneath, and two at the top of the structure.

Photos courtesy Shane Anderson

Shane Anderson, ATS at 1st Halfway House, says:

The planned outcome of the project was to build and suspend a 10Ft Tensegrity cube between 2 x 15Ft A-Frames, (Bottom Support) and stabilised on the top by 2 x 20Ft A-Frames.

The project got of to a good start with the initial idea of building and stabilizing the cube with gadget sticks (staves) before adding the tensioning ropes, however that soon fell apart as the cube was being tensioned as the gadget sticks broke under the strain. Liam and his team then reverted to plan B, which was to stabilize with 6Ft pioneering poles.

The A-Frames where constructed by the Junior Scouts and when all was in place the cube was lifted using the 15Ft A-Frames and 2 x block and tackles while being kept upright by guy ropes.

If you look in the cosntruction photo above, you'll see the 'jig' of light lathes that was used to hold the cub in place while it was built. As Shane says, it's a good idea, but you'll need to use heavier poles to handle the strain.

Photo courtesy Shane Anderson

Here's the model used to plan for this project. Models are really useful tools for pioneering, because they help you plan the project, picking up some problems before building at 1:1 scale.

Congratulations to Liam and his team for building this structure!