Just a quick update on the bamboo sitting pod #1, our trial exercise. Four of us (Zheng, Maxine, Matt and I) completed it in two days despite the heavy downpour. It was completed faster than we planned. The structure stays there as the owner would like to keep it (we planned to take it down straightaway), hence temporary structure support stays for redundancy.

Before we launch the second construction this month (July 18th), here is a gif of the first pod encapsulating the process. And some paps of the final pod.

Sponsored by Aksen (China and Indonesia).

What will we build? A sitting pod using locally sourced bamboo poles in Siming Mountains.

Timeline: 25 June – 2 July 2020

Background: Aksen (China and Indonesia)’s summer research and hands-on digital design activities. Due to the pandemic, Matt and I will be spending the three months summer in China this year, not in the UK; so we laid out a busy (and productive) summer with multiple projects.

For this bamboo building exercise, we need approximately 10 volunteers for our first bamboo building simple structure (which I am happy to inform we have reached the number), which entails a trifold research agenda (in computational design, embodied creativity and design pedagogy). We’ll also get to expand our knowledge with Weishun and he might also bring some students from Zhejiang University. It is a small step in a right direction as I have this in mind for more than a year. Hence I joined the BambooU course and Digital Futures workshop in mixed reality in 2019 to fill in the blanks. This project serves as a datum line for our future research in mixed reality (with Hololens), we’ll get to observe and document on-site problems before addressing them with mixed reality. We’ll also get to make lots of mistakes along the way.

Please get in touch for the T&C. Follow our progress and learnt lessons along the way via my IG’s stories.