When faced with the task of designing a column, our initial design goals (presumably as many other groups) were to make it as tall and as light as possible. In designing the column, we were very conscious of the concept of global bucking and so tried to anticipate and deal with this by creating a truncated form. And as this global bucking could in theory occur in any direction axially, to account for this we wanted to approximate a sort of cylindrical geometry with tapered ends as much as possible while still ensuring the form was easily constructible. This eventually lead us to hexagonal-cross sectional areas - the largest in the middle, and the smallest at the extremities, with trusses supporting these levels in between. In manufacturing this form, we added in some extra support mechanisms to ensure the pieces stayed together under compression: gusset plates, and triangular segments in front of each truss in the interior to ensure that the bases of the trusses, when under compression, did not slide inward, and also to provide the pinned segments with larger surface areas for attachment and gluing.
