RECONSTRUCTION OF PROTO-TENSEGRITY SCULPTURE

With this project, I aimed to draw attention to the importance of Karlis Johansons' heritage in design history. He was the first artist who created self-tensioned sculptures and exhibited them. 

In order to achieve this, I decided to reconstruct one of his constructivist sculptures using a photograph of the original as a reference and film the process. The video offers a visual guide on how to make this type of structure. In order to create a self-tensioned structure, I used steel cables, because they were used in the original design. When three or more poles are being forced into opposite directions with the help of the attached cables, they create a self-tensioned object. 

Despite the lack of wider recognition by art historians, Karlis Johansons' work influenced the Bauhaus artist László Mohoy-Nagy who referenced him in of his writings. Karlis Johansons was a member of the Constructivist art movement and exhibited nine self-tensioned sculptures at the museums in Moscow and New York in 1921. The only proof of his inventions are the exhibition photographs. Soon after, he stopped his activities and his destiny remains unknown. Later, the same design principle was rediscovered by Robert Buckminster Fuller and named 'Tensegrity' (tension + integrity). Since then, the tensegrity structures have found many uses in art and architecture worldwide.

*Tensegrity - a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression inside a network of continuous tension, and arranged in such a way that the compressed members (usually bars or struts) do not touch each other while the prestressed tensioned members (usually cables or tendons) delineate the system spatially. It applies when a discontinuous set of compression elements is opposed and balanced by a continuous tensile force, thereby creating an internal prestress that stabilises the entire structure.

(Click on the image to open gallery)