Sharing ideas is a two-way street
Taiwan designer Kevin Yu-jui Chou accepted an invitation from the ICDF to take part in the bamboo industry development project in January of 2016. He went to the Dominican Republic, where he offered a two-week workshop. He brainstormed with local design students, experts, and people from the bamboo industry, transforming bamboo material that had been cultivated for many years into innovative but still practical products.
Chou is no stranger to creative uses of bamboo. Since 2006, at the behest of the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute, he has worked with a master bamboo craftsman from Zhushan in Nantou County to come up with a whole series of innovative designs—such as “bubble couches,” “long-legged bamboo chairs,” and “bamboo electric fans”—that have won major awards home and abroad.
Chou observes that the Dominican Republic’s bamboo industry is still in the development stage. Although local citizens and businesspeople understand how to manufacture household furniture like chairs and tables out of bamboo, the designs and patterns are all very traditional, like the bamboo chairs and tables that Taiwanese used to have in each and every home. Because the Dominican Republic lacked the necessary processing machines, businesses and citizens mainly just cut some bamboo from the bamboo groves and, after some simple processing, made furniture out of it. This approach adds little value, and so attracts few people to join in, making it difficult to get any momentum for the development of the industry as a whole.
In recent years, the ICDF has brought in several Taiwan bamboo strip laminating machines to the Dominican Republic, effectively assisting local people and businesses to improve their processing techniques. Bamboo processed in this way loses its natural appearance, and after planing and compression, ends up as board that can be used much more widely than natural bamboo.
Chou, who stays abreast of the latest design trends in Europe and North America, says that even though bamboo is no longer of great interest to Taiwanese consumers, in recent years it has become widely appreciated in the West as a “green, environmentally friendly” material. If you browse through a current IKEA catalogue, you will see at a glance various beautifully designed household items made using bamboo, such as mirror frames and tissue boxes.
Having been invited to show at globally important furniture shows in Milan and Dubai, Chou was able to share his experiences of participating in international design shows with the workshop students, and also introduced to them practical examples of contemporary European and American furniture design. This information really broke down their preconceptions about bamboo.
Chou had never previously been to the Dominican Republic, and he admits that before going there he assumed that local residents only knew how to do the basics: cut down some bamboo and make functionally designed items for daily use. But after several days of observation and interaction in the classroom, the performance of the workshop attendees was far beyond what he had anticipated.
Not only was discussion spirited in the workshop, the students proposed many innovative ideas. For example one student—inspired by one of the most common crops in the nation, pineapple—used bamboo strips to weave a net-style lampshade in the shape of a pineapple. “This indicates that the workshop participants understand how to draw on local culture and motifs and integrate them into their designs.”
The bamboo production and marketing group in the Dominican Republic increases value-added by processing their own materials. (courtesy of Kevin Chou)
A resident of Ecuador proudly displays his creation, made with guidance from an ICDF technical aid team.
In July 2016 Professor Wang Wenxiong (first left in lefthand photo), who teaches in the Department of Creative Product Design at Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, was invited to offer a workshop in the Dominican Republic, where he exchanged ideas with local students.
the workshop in the Dominican Republic
A lamp produced by students from a bamboo-industry workshop shows real ingenuity in their design.
A clock produced by students from a bamboo-industry workshop shows real ingenuity in their design.