On the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there is a gigantic piece of artwork called “Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t and You Won’t Stop,” displayed. Robin Pogrebin, author of the article “Down from the Heights”, recently announced that Big Bambu is being dismantled.
Are you brave enough to be up there like these climbers?
Big Bambu is an art sculpture that used 6,800 bamboo poles and 70 miles of cord to make. Apparently, they “used up all the rope in the United States” and had to wait for more rope from Switzerland. It changed everyday, ever since it was opened to the public in April, since two artists and many rock climbers add to it everyday. In the end, it was 50 feet tall. A bunch of rock climbers, who were listening to the Rolling Stones, climbed up the sculpture and started adding more bamboo poles to the existing sculpture.
Big Bambu was open to the public and had over 600,000 visitors climb it, including Micahel Bloomberg and Paul McCartney. There were even 6 marriage proposals that occurred within the jungle of bamboo poles. There are designs like staircases and living rooms in the sculpture. Before you can climb up Big Bambu, visitors had to sign a waiver and follow some rules, like no sandals and cell phones permitted on the structure. Once on top of Big Bambu, they can see the whole Central Park. It would be a nice view that they don’t get to see everyday.
Personally, I wouldn’t climb Big Bambu because of the height it is at and the feeling that it is not sturdy enough. There are wholes and gaps throughout the whole structure. However, many people love it and have even thought of petitioning to keep it there permanently. A man once tried to camp out there by curling up in a corner and hiding from everyone but eventually a guard saw him and prohibited him from sleeping there. If the sculpture was not dismantled yet, would you want to climb it? Keep this in mind, it is a sculpture that extends 50 feet high from the roof of the Met and it was made by climbers who stuffed their ears with headphones and listened to the Rolling Stones.
Here is a link to a video showing Big Bambu. Click HERE.
Huh.. i heard about this, and how it’s closing.. actually wanted to check it out..but got too lazy =[.. hope those who are petitioning get it so it could stay there permanently
And WOW, people actually got married up there? That’s insane!
The structure sounds cool, but I don’t think I would climb it..I would freak out about how high it is. But the view form the top must be amazing. Kudos to those who do climb it 🙂
Wow I can’t believe I haven’t heard of this until now. This sounds like a really cool structure/art project and yes, I would definitely climb it. I love heights and I love climbing so I would definitely take this challenge. Too bad it is being dismantled. Why would they take it down? It doesn’t seem to pose any amount of threat.
Now if only it was 500 feet! Now that would be really fun. This is a cool structure and it’s pretty awesome that we have art pieces such as this our city. Really ingenious of those two guys to do it.