Tensile Architecture

Architecture that is Worlds Apart from the Ordinary… Brought to You by Ronstan Tensile Architecture

In the natural environment, we see intricate and beautiful art forms every day. The spider’s web, the butterfly’s wing, vines traversing a canopy of branches and leaves overhead. All are living examples of tensile architecture. In the built environment, tensile architecture is a complex combination of engineering and design.

By definition, tensile architecture involves structures of small mass relative to their span that utilise elements acting in tension to carry loads to the supports, while tensegrity structures combine tension and compression. Both tensile and tensegrity structures rely on optimised design processes and minimised materials, like prestressed tensile cables and rods, to achieve their “lightness” and form. They use three dimensional design elements to resist deformation, ensuring greater structural efficiency and stability over large areas.

Tensile architecture construction has been growing in popularity for the past decade. It is far more accessible to architects and owners than ever before, owing to lighter and stronger modern materials, enormous advances in complex modelling and analytic technologies, and the structural engineering and construction experience of a specialty design-build contractor like Ronstan Tensile Architecture.

Ronstan understands how cables and rods can be combined in uniquely aesthetic designs that provide meaningful utility and contribute to sustainable design. Ronstan simplifies the highly technical nature of tensile architecture and works with architects and structural engineers to create innovative architectural rigging applications. The simple shape and form that Ronstan Tensile Architecture can achieve with tensile structures masks their true complexity and creates mystique.