Most of us—urban creatures—would be familiar with bamboo in the form of decorative artifacts that adorn the walls as ‘ethnic’ décor. But take a trip to Tripura—where bamboo is woven not just into baskets or mats, but is bent and trussed into bridges, fish traps and even houses—and you may well change your mind about this multifaceted member of the grass family.
Or, you could take a look at Sandeep Sangaru’s creations.
Sangaru—winner of the Red Dot Design Award in 2009, the Design for Asia Award in 2011, and the Design for Social Impact Award by British Council in 2012—has been working with bamboo for eight years now. “There are some 125 kinds of bamboo in India alone; I have worked with only three or four kinds. Each has its own special properties and can be put to different uses. Every time I work with it, something new can happen,” says the 40-year-old. And it can take up to a year-and-a-half to design the simplest looking chair, which also happens to be strong and elegant.
While documenting the crafts of Andhra Pradesh, Sangaru went from village to village, home to home, trying to see how crafts are made. “When I saw the process of making these crafts—metal casting, crochet, weaving—it opened me to the possibility of how design can intervene in making them functional, in a mainstream production and market.”
(This story appears in the July-Aug 2014 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)