Building Under Pressure

Building under Pressure explores tensegrity as a practical construction method for furniture. By reducing tensile structures to their irreducible unit, what I call a minimal tension cell, the project develops a standardised system of drop-forged aluminium connectors derived from the same ribbed ovoid profile. These structures resist representation, revealing themselves only through physical experimentation. The result is a shelving unit and a table, both deployable in minutes, held together by Dyneema ropes and self-locking cams, with no screws and no superfluous mass. By reducing material to its strict minimum, the system achieves a very low carbon footprint, while ensuring durability and ease of repair. An underexplored structural principle, tensegrity holds the promise of a considered, industrialisable approach to building resilient objects. In tension, lightness becomes resilience.