Prototype Bamboo Furniture

Bamboo is well known for its furniture and building potential. I wanted to explore how this was done, and since bamboo carpentry is quite distinct from its wood equivalents, the only way to do this was to build prototypes of my own.

Each piece was therefore an investigative process: testing how different bamboo species, sizes, and connection techniques behave when brought together.

There are not a huge range of bamboo joinery techniques (one Balinese carpenter told me ‘if you can make a fishmouth joint, you can make anything!’), but neither are they easy to do. Building furniture gave me a way to do joints over and over again, and to make them serviceable, both from structural and aesthetic angles.

One of the great benefits (to my mind) of making bamboo furniture is also that it substantial amounts of offcuts, which then became interesting elements of their own.