Meet BIG BAMBU!
Jul 29, 2010

Last week, YI visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see Big Bambu, the giant growing installation on the museum’s rooftop by artists (and brothers) Doug and Mike Starn. Before going up to the roof, we met up with a friendly intern from the Education Department. She gave us a very comprehensive overview of the building process and the concept behind the project. Standing thirty feet high (and very soon to become fifty feet high), Big Bambu is made entirely of (you guessed it!) bamboo, a very eco-friendly building material (which totally won my support). A huge project that requires collaboration between numerous departments within the Met and many other public offices, such as the Mayor’s Office and the Departments of Buildings and Cultural Affairs, Big Bambu is being assembled by a team of artists and rock climbers. The artists decided that they needed a group of brave, fearless people who were comfortable with heights, so they chose rock climbers!

The concept behind Big Bambu is that it is a living organism that is constantly growing and expanding with nature. As the rock climbers work on building the structure, they are encouraged to add their own individual touches so that the structure is more of an entire group effort rather than just bamboo and rope. Big Bambu is built like a giant wave, traversed by a long pathway. Tours are hosted every half hour (free with museum admission). The idea is that the pathway is an artery and the people moving through it are blood cells that keep the structure alive. To further substantiate the living organism idea, the artists will begin to move pieces of Big Bambu from one side of the wave to another, breaking the connections formed by the nylon ropes and reforming them elsewhere so that the structure is literally changing and evolving. It sounds chaotic, but it is an organized chaos inherent in all living things!

Enough talking from me for now, but check out the artists’ website at starnstudio.com for cool pictures and video!

By Sandy