¶ Tidal
Index Entry
Tidal:
"Tension and compression are inseparable and coordinate functions of structural systems, but one may be at high tide aspect, i.e., most prominent phase, while the other is at low tide, or least prominent aspect or phase, e.g., a visibly tensioned rope is compressively contracted in almost invisible increment of its girth dimensions everywhere along its length. This low-tide aspect of compression occurs in planes perpendicular to its compressed axis.
Columns which are visibly loaded only by weights applied to their respective top ends, are easily seen to have their vertical axis in compression, but invisibly the horizontal girths of these columns are also in tension as the result of a cigar-shaped swelling pattern of forces em acting in the column at right angle to its loaded axis, which tends invisibly to transform toward the shape of a squash or a banana. As a result of the visible, or high-tide, vertical compressing aspect of such axial loading of the column’s system, this swelling force imperceptibly stretches, or tenses, the column’s girth as a low-tide reciprocal function of the overall structural integrity reciprocity."
- Cite TENSEGRITY, Art News Annual, p. 119, Dec’61
