The orange net: an idea by TENAX

Maybe many people do not know that the orange net, that spot of colour that we see in every Italian town and village, has been invented by Tenax.

This icon, symbol of a country which works, evolves and builds, was born in the early 80s from a great intuition of this Italian company located in Brianza.

As the book “Disegno e Design – Brevetti e creatività italiana” (“Drawing and design – Italian patents and creativity”) ed. Marsilio exhaustively explains, this project was born from the idea of creating a net by piercing or making regular holes on a film of plastic material, and no longer intertwining different elements (extruded threads).

Initially, the product was a sort of warning tape with a limited height. Then, Tenax began to produce nets minimum 1 meter high, thus enabling to fence building sites and to warn of work in progress.

This product has been incredibly successful because this technology offers a great advantage: you can produce a net with a high covering surface and a limited weight.

The first orange net was GIGAN, still in the TENAX range. It has been synonymous with “open building site” for decades and was the forerunner of all building site fences.

The TENAX orange net is highly visible due to its orange colour, as well as highly tear-resistant because of the stretching process it undergoes during production.

From that moment on, TENAX GIGAN became a true designer item, although most people do not know their authors and inventors, as highlighted in the book “Design anonimo in Italia – oggetti comuni e progetto incognito” by Alberto Bassi, ed. Electa.

Since then, Tenax has created and successfully launched many new orange nets, such as DRAGON, LABOR, GRIFON, AREA CANTIERE. These meshes are simple (extruded) or reinforced by a stretching process (mono-oriented), and nowadays we can still see them around us or in many films and TV series.

The problem of brand awareness was brilliantly solved with our innovative WORKING product. Indeed, thanks to its refractive tape “WORK IN PROGRESS BY TENAX”, this net warns even more clearly of the presence of a building site and allows us to rightly sign our invention.

Sources:
“Design anonimo in Italia – oggetti comuni e progetto incognito”
of Alberto Bassi, ed. Electa.

“Disegno e Design – Brevetti e creatività italiana” ed. Marsilio