Big Bambú

In a city where we rarely look up, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is giving us a reason to do just that; but watch your step!

Doug + Mike Starn, a pair of identical twins with a studio located in Beacon, New York, are transforming the roof of the museum one bamboo stalk at a time. Currently, they have organized over 40,000 bamboo shoots to feel, at one glance, like an organized chaos of sticks and ropes, but with the turn of the head suddenly the piece becomes an ebbing and flowing wave of sculpture.

The Starn Brothers, originally from New Jersey, bring from their previous photographic work the same transformative aspect of movement and honesty to their latest project, but this extreme three-dimensional work allows a more elaborative emphasis on the connectivity of the medium. There is no disguising the colorful loops and knots that keep you floating thirty-five feet over the roof.

The project’s stiletto-bamboo, structural members firmly rooted on the roof deck and the connecting ramps and steps were carefully planned by the brothers and a crew of architects and engineers using 3D modeling software. While the brothers still follow the growth of their art piece, they leave every detail of how each stalk continues to be attached and connected together to the sole discretion of the construction crew, who are not architects or engineers, but rock climbers who work on the project each weekday.

On my Memorial Day visit, this wave had reached only thirty-five feet above the Met’s roof garden, but by its close on October 31, 2010 it will reach fifty feet. Plan ahead as you must have a ticket to walk through the structure and there are several restrictions on what you may carry or wear on the tour. Check the Met’s website for more information.