Bound Canopy

Invisible Studio collaborated with Charley Brentnall, Marc Dix of LT Studio and Onion Collective CIC in leading a workshop to construct, with 50 local volunteers, a timber canopy and stage. This included a planted landscape that marked the reclaiming of the overgrown former pleasure gardens for community use.

The structure was made from a series of dry laminated green timber hoops that were bound together with jute rope and no mechanical fixings and few tools. These were bent into shape which effectively tightened the bindings, which will grow even stronger as the rope shrinks when wet and the timber seasons. Many of the volunteers were ‘unskilled’ in the formal sense – and the project is testament to the power of a community coming together to do something for itself.

The project is an example of designing through making – the exact relationships of the components would have been impossible to predetermine, and could only be discovered through the collective endeavour of the volunteers taking part.