Spotted: Myanmar is facing a severe housing crisis, as conflict triggered by the military takeover in 2021 has resulted in the internal displacement of around 1.95 million people, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Social enterprise Housing NOW, founded by Myanmar-based design group Blue Temple, is working to build affordable housing using an innovative and sustainable technique.
Housing NOW uses bamboo as a construction material for building prefabricated, modular structures at a cost of around $1,000 (around €923) per unit. Using computational tools, the company generated a structure optimised to respond to forces such as earthquakes and wind loads.
Because larger-diameter bamboo is more expensive, small-diameter bamboo was used instead, and bundled together to produce a structure that’s stronger than conventional, load-bearing, large-diameter bamboo. The hybrid construction technique allowed the creation of prefabricated ‘structural frames’, which were then combined with local construction and assembly of the remaining parts of the house. The result is a large-scale and affordable housing solution.
In 2022, Housing NOW started a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, which raised enough funding to construct six modules as part of a pilot project. The company plans to continue raising funds and expanding the project.
The promise of bamboo as a renewable resource is catching on. Springwise has also spotted a platform for investing in low-impact bamboo and the development of land for sustainable bamboo growth in Jamaica.
The strength and availability of bamboo give it the potential to be as dominant in construction as concrete and steel, argues Atelier One engineer Chris Matthews in this interview.
“This idea that we have a sheet of rigid, extremely polished buildings, built from all kinds of steel and concrete, it has to change,” Matthews told Dezeen.
“Bamboo has a real part to play as a low-carbon material, and it needs to be part of the toolkit that we have moving forward,” he continued. “It’s going to be a major player.”
“The speed of growth is amazing”
Matthews spoke to Dezeen from the London office of British engineering firm Atelier One, where he is an associate director specialising in structural bamboo.
Bamboo is an extremely fast-growing species of giant grass that grows abundantly, quickly and cheaply around the world. Atelier One believes so much in its potential to become a dominant construction material that it has a team dedicated to its use in architecture.
While wood takes approximately 30 years to grow before being harvested as structural timber, a bamboo culm takes just three years.
“The speed of growth is amazing,” Matthews explained. “And the other wonderful thing is that you can grow bamboo on degraded land,” he continued.
“Land that wouldn’t otherwise be being used, you can actually regenerate using bamboo.”
Another key property of bamboo is that it is incredibly strong. In fact, its strength is comparable to aluminium, Matthews said.
“People always say it’s as strong as steel – it’s not as strong as steel, it’s close to aluminium,” Matthews said. “It is also actually stronger than concrete,” he continued.
“So in terms of structures, there’s no reason why you can’t use it.”
Locking carbon in buildings “the way forward”
Yet for Matthews, one of the characteristics of bamboo that makes it most attractive for the future of architecture is that it is an effective carbon store.
Similarly to timber, it sequesters carbon as it grows. In fact, there is even ongoing research to suggest that the material stores more carbon than timber, Matthews highlighted.
“There’s no kind of definitive paper on this yet because it’s such a hard thing to measure, but some papers say it’s between two and six times as much [sequestered carbon],” he said.
“It’s a great way of taking carbon out of the environment and making sure it doesn’t get re-released.”
As with many other advocates of sustainable materials, Matthews believes that the architecture and construction industries must urgently turn focus to the use of biomaterials such as bamboo to design buildings that sequester carbon, rather than expel it.
“In general, the idea of bio-based materials where we are capturing carbon and locking it up in a building, that has to be the way forward,” he said.
“So instead of thinking of a building as something that we have to use up our carbon budget to make, we’re instead thinking of the building as a way of locking up some carbon over the lifetime of the building,” he added. “I hope more and more of that will happen.”
Atelier One now testing structural limits of bamboo
Atelier One’s interest in bamboo was sparked by its founder Neil Thomas’ involvement in The Arc, a bamboo gymnasium at the Green School Bali designed by architecture studio Ibuku.
The sculptural building, which was highly commended in the 2021 Dezeen Awards, is distinguished by its complex double-curved roof made entirely from tensioned bamboo.
“The school has shown that, whereas bamboo was once seen as a ‘poor man’s timber’, actually, the beauty of the structures that result really is amazing,” reflected Matthews.
He argued that it also demonstrates it is possible to overcome the main disadvantage of the material, which has previously been a susceptibility to insect and fungal attacks, which in turn reduces its longevity.
This is achieved by ensuring the bamboo is not exposed directly to the sun, water or the ground. The bamboo is also treated to remove starch to help prevent these attacks, said Matthews.
“The issue has been that [bamboo is] prone to fungal attack and insect attack,” he said. “You’ve now got a material that not only has this amazing speed and strength, but it’s also able to have longevity as well.”
Today, Atelier One’s focus is primarily on maximising the strength and structural capabilities of bamboo, specifically through 3D-printed connections to link culms together.
“So you’ve got this amazingly strong material and now what we’re trying to play with is how you actually get the full strength out of it,” Matthews said. “It’s all about the connections.”
“We’ve started playing with 3D-printed connectors to link pieces of bamboo and get a longer piece of fabric. Once you start playing with the shapes, there’s no end to the possibilities.”
Laminated bamboo “seems to be performing better than timber”
The team is also exploring the potential of laminated bamboo – engineered bamboo products typically formed of layers of bamboo glued, stacked and pressed together.
According to Matthews, laminated bamboo can be used in the same ways as cross-laminated timber (CLT) but actually outperforms it in terms of strength.
“You don’t just have to use the crops whole and unprocessed, there is a whole industry of laminated bamboo,” Matthews said.
“Laminated bamboo actually seems to be performing better than timber, and also just like timber you can encapsulate it, so you put plasterboard on if you need to, it can be used as part of a build-up.”
“People are doing it, it’s early days, but the properties are amazing,” he added. “And it’s really starting to take hold.”
Among the varieties of engineered bamboo are scrimber, cross-laminated timber-bamboo (CLTB) and a type of radial laminated bamboo called Radlam.
The latter is Atelier One’s favourite, Matthews said, as it is processed in a way that retains all the layers of a bamboo culm, reducing waste and maximising strength.
“The reason we like this is because you get the whole culm, so the whole thickness of the bamboo – you’re not wasting material as you process it,” he said.
“And also, by not passing off the outer skin, you’re getting the full strength,” he continued. “It’s three times stronger than standard timber, so the properties are amazing.”
Another advocate for bamboo is Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia. In an interview with Dezeen, he described the material as the “green steel of the 21st century”.
“I think bamboo and laminated bamboo will replace other materials and become the ‘green steel’ of the 21st century,” said Nghia.
“I hope many architects realise the potential of the material and build with bamboo more and more.”
Dezeen In Depth
If you enjoy reading Dezeen’s interviews, opinions and features, subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines.
This year’s Design Pavilion for NYCxDESIGN included an experimental installation dubbed Bamboo Cloud, designed and crafted by Shanghai-based architecture studio llLab. The lightweight structure appeared to float over Gansevoort Plaza in New York‘s Meatpacking District from October 12th through 18th during Archtober 2023. Bamboo, a versatile and sustainable material, has been an integral part of architectural history for centuries. Primarily embraced in Asian and African regions, this resilient resource has been employed for a boundless number of architectural applications. From woven mats and panels to split strips for shingles and siding, to entire bamboo culms used for structural elements like columns, beams, and rafters. This rich tradition of bamboo architecture serves as the foundation for the Bamboo Cloud, which arrived this month in New York City.
With Bamboo Cloud, the architects at llLab have taken the material to new heights, exploring an application that pushes the boundaries of what it can achieve. Bamboo’s strength and lightweight properties make it ideal for sustainable design innovations. The Design Pavilion for NYCxDesign exemplifies this potential in architecture. Composed of two amorphous ‘clouds’ constructed entirely from bamboo and supported by structural columns, the bamboo is intricately woven to form a porous surface that shelters a light and ethereal environment, ideal for relaxing and gathering in the city.
Bamboo Cloud is softly illuminated from within, as well as from below — thanks to a collaboration with architectural lighting design firm L’Observatoire International and lighting suppliers Nanometer Lighting Color Kinetics.
the Bamboo Cloud pavilion exemplifies the material’s versatility in New York City
from guilin to new york
The Shanghai-based team at llLab has been challenging the traditional applications of bamboo long before this Bamboo Cloud arrived in New York. The team had explored the material’s potential with a similar installation which, in 2020, occupied the dramatic, forested landscape of Guilin, China. see designboom’s coverage here!
‘Bamboo is still relatively ambiguously defined, though bamboo has been applied in various aspects in the field of architecture. In terms of structural calculation and material properties, it can still only be compared with wood in the role of ‘engineered bamboo,’ for imperfect construction implementation,’ said Hanxaio Liu, Founding Partner of llLab. ‘However, the Bamboo Cloud intends to unify original bamboo and engineered bamboo in terms of materials and applications, as well as their properties and physical presentation.’
two bamboo ‘clouds’ shelter an open-air space for relaxing in the city
Hanxaio Liu continues: ‘Bamboo Cloud focuses on the relationships between inherent material properties and their potential applications beyond convention. Bamboo has been mainly applied on the scale of handcraft, followed by the recent popularization of its utilization in sustainable buildings. However, the advantage of utilizing bamboo has not been thoroughly understood, so most applications have remained superficial.’
bamboo’s renewable nature makes it an environmentally responsible choice the Design Pavilion represents a vision for a fresh, sustainable future in architecture