Cut'n Break

The glass-master at "Espace-Verre" sold us some leftover glass pieces. The range of colour and size was quite limiting...at the end this turned out to be an interesting challenge. But most importantly he also gave some helpful tips.
It's the first time I heard about Silicone being used to do stained glas artwork.

We were all skeptical in the beginning. But it worked! All four "windows" survived the summer ... and so did the tourists that passed underneath it!

The Center-Piece

The original idea for the center-piece was to use the bottoms of wine bottles in between the bamboos (sketch). There were only 10 days left to finish this Installation and the budget was getting dry.

How is it possible to drill holes through thick glass? Will it be save (Wind!)? Will it look nice at the end?
We did tests cutting bottles... it looked too rough and the edges were razor-sharp.

So we decided to get stained - glass from a Glass-Studio "Espace-Verre" in Montreal.
Click here if you want to see some glas blowers in action. It's worth a visit!

Arecas Arrived

The Two Techniques

1. To cover the larger metal structures with Bamboo-Panels the "Knotting Technique" was used. A little fruit-basket Florian saw at a friends place was the inspiration for this technique.


2. Later Boris introduced the "Bending Technique"for the smaller structures.
The horizontal Bamboo's and the top of the metal frame gave enough resistance to keep the vertical Bamboos in place without the use of knots.

740 Bamboos left

The big walls count about 140-170 bamboos and vary between 200 cm or 250 cm ... and very heavy.

Big steps..

The first panels are attached!

Friends and Volunteers

Fortunately we had many helping hands
that mastered the art of bamboo-bondage.

Knots, Knots, Knots ...

In the foreground you can see the bags of Bamboo ... waiting to be tied up.


















































Each Bamboo was numbered to keep the design exact.

1000 Bamboo

The next step was to assemble the Bamboo to panels that would cover the frames wrapped in burlap jute.

Finito la Jute!!

Burlap Jute

Boris Pintado suggested Burlap Jute for the wrapping of the metal. The yellow, ocher color and beautiful roughly woven texture of the Jute transforms the harsh metal-gray into an organic element of this garden.

The Beginning

With monkey-like skills we climbed up the scaffolding, the Burlap-Jute between our teeth.














Some metal doors were up to 4.5 m (14 feet) high.

The Concept

The preliminary pencil sketch above by Florian Fiebig was scanned, painted and then merged onto the image in Photoshop.

The challenge was to use the already existing Metal Doors and the surrounding English Garden to create a completely new design. These Metal doors where designed and built by Martin Wade for Flora International 2006. They were wrapped in Fabric like giant flower Petals. Check his site to see his version:mwla.ca(after you click enter, go to "Public","Gardens", "3").
An interesting contrast to an English Garden would be a Tropical Garden.