Every year at my school the Year 12 Tech students produce something to give back to the school. My classmate and I together produced this large bench for a vacant area of the school. I took on a lot of the design work of this project, and found my inspiration from a large bamboo sculpture which featured at Brisbane's Southbank for the Brisbane Festival. I decided bamboo was going to be the main material for this project and onto the design I went. The design is mean to give the effect that it is solid bamboo lengths all tied together in a single mass, however is not.

 

The curved form was cut out of 3 ply pieces that are sepereated at equal lengths with large support posts running through their internal. The bamboo then cretaes the sitting component to the bench, filling in the otherwise voided space. Bamboo's strength as a building material is exemplified here, and how many lengths working together make a unified whole.

 

The bench measures 3.5m long and seats several people comfortably. I have heard since leaving school that it is now the 'popular'/'must have' spot for the students and teachers to sit at lunch breaks. This is exactly what we designed and built it for, which is great!