Physical Products & Prototypes

Hacking Bamboo: Electronics with natural materials

Exploring bamboo as a material for electronic products — a powerbank, FM radio, and incense stick holder built within the tubular constraints of bamboo.

Client
Industrial Design Center, Mumbai
Year
2018
Bamboo Radio with Capacitive Touch
Incense Stick Holder
Bamboo Powerbank that can be infinitely repaired

Hacking Bamboo was a part of an exploratory field study geared towards exposing budding designers to material sensibility of bamboo and tribal methods of producing bamboo artefacts and products.

My aim was to explore use of bamboo as a material for electronic products and how might we produce new interactions with bamboo's tubular constraints. The FM radio uses the middle disk as a volume knob and top surface as a capacitive next switch. Three objects were created: a powerbank, an FM radio, and an incense stick holder.

Case Study