SUMMER OPEN HOUSE
with SIMÃO ROMUALDO
LAROCHE POTTERY
OIHARA RESEARCH PROJECT
M:H
Back in May, a friend furiously hacked down long, spindly pieces of hedge bamboo (Phyllostachys sp.) from the fence in his back garden in Dalston and this encounter, followed by me taking the resented pieces home, reminded me of my love for bamboo. This bamboo, new in its growth, surprised me by how incredibly soft and easy to cut it was, since the pieces I had worked with in the past always required a saw. Bamboo is regularly assembled into scaffolding and carries countless builders up and across the outside of old buildings in Shanghai, where my parents grew up. This astounding strength of bamboo is the result of a natural composite structure, consisting of cellulose fibrils surrounded by a matrix of lignin and hemicellulose (Youssefian & Rahbar, 2015). In a space of three months, the same patch of Dalston bamboo had established its own strength and now required substantially more pressure to cut down.
Within the room, the dried leaves from a Cordyline sp. (which can be seen directly outside the window) start a conversation with bamboo on the sculptural potential of plants. In dialogue, the leaves hold their own impressive strength by securing the bamboo together with ease. There is also some tension.
Field notes #1: Growing bamboo is a slightly darker shade of green than the more established pieces, with newer nodes emerging with a brown tinge. The regions along the nodes that are found under the sheath have yet to develop their strength and bend like rubber when the sheath is removed.
Reference:
Youssefian, S., Rahbar, N. Molecular Origin of Strength and Stiffness in Bamboo Fibrils. Sci Rep 5, 11116 (2015).
SURO LAB, LONDON
(August, 2023)
(August, 2023)