In 1995 Simon presented his first public, large-scale bamboo installation. At the time he was in his seventh year as designer-in-residence with Melbourne’s contemporary dance company, Danceworks. Simon constructed a dense bamboo sculpture, which hugged the existing footbridge across the Yarra River at Southbank. The project, known as Bridge, was part of the Melbourne Festival. The construction was followed by a season of aerial dance performance on the installation by Danceworks.

What Simon observed here, and which became so crucial to the philosophy of Bambuco, was that the audience seemed more captivated by the construction process than the spectacle of the performance.