Tensegrity-Turm mit additiv gefertigten Verbindungsknoten für das Deutsche Museum in München

Tensegrity tower with additively manufactured components for the German Museum in Munich. In 2006, the decision for a general renovation of the German Museum in Munich was taken. The first of two major renovation phases began nine years later and was successfully completed in the summer of 2022. The first phase included the exhibition on bridges and hydraulic engineering, which was updated as part of the renovation. In the center of the exhibition, space was created for a new exhibit to serve as a prominent meeting point for guided tours and to showcase innovative design and fabrication methods in civil engineering. To meet this challenge, the Chair of Metal Structures at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), in collaboration with project partners from academia and industry, designed, planned and built a 5-m-high tensegrity tower with additive manufactured aluminium connectors. The minimalistic structure is characterised by the application of state-of-the-art static calculation methods and the use of laser powder bed fusion of metals to produce the aluminium nodes. Remarkably, the tower was realized with a weight of only 150 kg (compression elements, cables, connection details).