Paris studio Hugh Dutton Associés have won a competition to design electricity pylons for Italian energy company Terna. Each pylon would be made of welded sheet steel, individually shaped according to its location and the forces acting on it. Called Pylons of the Future Dancing with Nature, the design is based on new shoots appearing from the earth.
The pylons are inspired by the form of the first tender shoots of a young plant. The first shoots grow out of the ground and are stabilized by a system of tension cables at their tips according to the concepts of Tensegrity as invented by Fuller.
Like a real tree, which is stabilized by the prestress of its bark exerting a tensile force on the heart of the trunk itself that resists this force with a corresponding compressive one.
