This project was a collaboration with Cella Collective - architects, designers and material researchers and was assembled at RARA Workshops in Clapton.

The brief was to create a demountable and reusable communal dining table for a festival, seating 30 people!

We decided to use the opportunity to explore bamboo, and in particular UK-grown species. As a result of climate change, larger bamboo sizes are starting to be grown in European temparate climates (Portugal and the Netherlands), so the material has a lot of future potential in construction.

The structure is a 5m spanning truss with cantilevers either end. Just two member lengths are used to create the table. The member nodes are carefully drilled 8mm holes through the bamboo ends, with a 6mm threaded steel bar passing through each hole across the width of the table. The table is then assembled as individual components of the truss table and legs, stacked up on 13 steel bars building up the truss over the width of the table.

A simple schematic explains the order in which to stack the members onto the steel bars, and this enables anybody to take the pieces and put the table together like a Lego kit.

This project is part of a wider exploration of structures made using UK-grown bamboo. An increasingly viable and more sustainable alternative to timber. We've been developing concepts for canopy and shell structures and installations. Take a look at our thoughts here.