Sean and I got up much earlier than we normally like to on the weekend, in order to make it up to the Met by 9:00am so we could get tickets to tour the Big Bambu installation. After a full week of rain, we lucked out today with a gorgeous day - sunny, breezy, and cool.
The tour of Big Bambu did not disappoint (our tour guide, Maeve, was great!). There are awesome views from the top (you end up 5 stories above the Met's rooftop), and I loved walking along the maze of paths. The different paths are almost invisible in the mass of bamboo until you're upon them. Big Bambu is like a treehouse on steroids.
Apparently Doug and Mike Starn enlisted a bunch of rock climbers to build the installation because they wanted four things: people who could climb safely, weren't afraid of heights, were expert knot-tiers (that is all that holds the installation together), and people who didn't have preconceived notions of what it means to build things (so, no construction workers, architects, etc). The installation started going up in May, and will come down in October. It's been built organically over the past five months, with no plans set in stone other than the general form.
You can tell that the rock climbers have had a lot of leeway in the construction of Big Bambu - there are all kinds of random little insertions/details: benches, a built-in recliner in the middle of nowhere, and a living room area, complete with beer cozies and wind chimes. Unfortunately, they don't allow photography on the tours (boo), so we had to settle for photos from the rooftop of the Met.
If you haven't been there yet, I highly recommend going before it closes on October 31st. I also suggest getting in line for tickets a little before 9:00am - we were one of the first ones there, and the line got super long behind us...
Found this funny statue in one of the sculpture galleries on our way out of the Met...I guess he doesn't like me very much...
No comments:
Post a Comment