A curious exploration of this sustainable building material
Towards the end of 2017 we began to explore some sustainable building materials that are beginning to emerge across both landscape architecture and architecture. This included, recycled bed springs, rope, traditional timber and the ever-increasing popularity of bamboo.
As we step into 2018 we are once again struck by the potential of Bamboo as a building material and here are some reasons why…
Bamboo is natural. It sounds obvious but we are well aware with the current plastics crisis in both landfill and our oceans that man-made compositions almost always harbour much greater environmental impacts than naturally derived materials.
It is fast growing. It can be more than 30 years before hardwood can be utilised as a building material where bamboo can be cut after 3-5 years and more than this, will then regrow again and again.
It’s strong. Some tests have even shown that it’s compressive strength is stronger than concrete. This would presumably vary from species to species (and there are more than 1000 species of bamboo across the world) but never-the-less, it’s impressive.
Colour. The traditional “blond” bamboo itself varies in colour and shade from yellow to brown and there are methods being developed to dye and colour this. But perhaps more excitingly there are also some species of slower-growing bamboo which provide alternative colouration from dark brown to jet black. There are various theories as to why this colouration occurs including genetic mutation which puts the darker bamboo at an advantage in terms of light absorption but whatever the theory, it’s a lesser known cousin of blonde that could transform bamboo use across the built environment.
There will always be critics and I suspect many of bamboo’s criticisms will be in relation to its raw, rough and “imperfect” form. For this reason, I imagine that its use across architecture will be a harder sell than across landscape architecture. Never-the-less in a contemporary world of clean lines and minimalist garden design, bamboo isn’t the obvious choice.
I would argue though that the imperfections, the knobbles and nodules are where it’s beauty lies. Landscape by its very definition is natural, raw, unformed. No two plants, trees or lawns will ever be exactly the same despite our best efforts to prune, train and manipulate them into place. What bamboo offers us therefore isn’t a chance to shape it into a material that works for us but a chance to create something new.
We already know bamboo has applications across fencing, flooring, sculpture and almost every other aspect of landscape build. However, I would argue if we try to train it to conform to our convention rules, we will in the long term, inevitably fail. But…if we explore it curiously, embracing it, in all its peculiarity, it may very well offer us a whole new approach to design innovation. One that functionally and aesthetically pushes the boundaries of conventional design and at the same time happens to be sustainable. So sustainable in fact, that Neil Thomas from Atelier One Structural engineers even boldly described it as “the most sustainable natural building material on earth”.
Photo by Pablo Azurduy
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