Modern bamboo architecture

It is a fact that literature about bamboo in modern architecture is hard to find. At this time bamboo is just used as a forming and constructive element. Bamboo was introduced to Europe through some sporadic organizations and trial projects. 

In regions where bamboo is domestic, it was not just integrated in culture, but even in architecture. The logical conclusion is that architects of these regions are more interested in presenting the qualities of this material to us. 

Bamboo has the image of being the building material of the poorer class, for example in Colombia the upper class especially prefers concrete. In India the highest caste builds with stone, the middle castes use wood and only the lowest castes use bamboo.

The material bamboo is not standardized so people in Europe are confronted with difficulties, if they want to build with bamboo.   

joint by Renzo Piano

picture

Nevertheless some famous architects and engineers already made their experiments with this natural product. The qualities of bamboo are also appreciated by Renzo Piano. He was interested in combining light metal elements [tubes /slabs] with bamboo. In this way there arise intersections between bamboo- and modern light metal- constructions, Arata Isozaki, Buckminster Fuller und Frei Otto.

Simón Vélez

Tower in the Parque de la Cafetera in Montenegro/Colombia. Vélez/Villegas (1993)
height= 19m

Vélez is a graduate architect, from the University of Colombia in Bogotá. He was born in Manizale/ Colombia in 1949 and has completed over 100 projects using concrete, bamboo (Guada Angustafolia), mangrove wood, woven palm mat lathing (or expanded metal lath) and clay roof tile.

Simón Vélez works from Bogotá, Colombia, South America. As much of his work has been in very rural areas for ranchers, he has been allowed to experiment with the locally available materials due to a lack of a regulating authority and the relative difficulty of importing the standard building materials of brick and mortar.

Vélez has developed a very interesting model for building experimental structures. He builds only with his own well-trained crew of workers, so he is able to constantly draw upon past successes and failures in detailing. He intentionally keeps drawings simple, usually freehand on single sheets of 8x11 graph paper. Cad- drawings only are made for the purchaser or for building improvements.

The clearest concept to be seen in his drawings is the necessity for balance. These cantilevers are very large, but maintain an obvious center of gravity over the support.

bridge for the "Bob Marley Museum" in Jamaica

Very often bamboo only was tested on compression, but the real quality exists in its capability to compense shear tension. Vélez used this in his framework constructions, which were able to cantilever more than 9 meters and to strain about 27 meters. 

1998 Simón Vélez took part in a summer-workshop in Boisbuchet/France, which was arranged by the Vitra Design Museum and the Center Georges Pompidou. At this opportunity he realized his first project in Europe - a garden pavilion. 

One year later he set up a prototype of a 'low-cost-house', which could be built by the inhabitants. 

The building is extremely resistant to earthquakes and is based on bamboo and loam. It has 60 square meters divided on two floors and the value in Columbia is about 5000$.

factory hall in Pennsylvania, Colombia [1993]

Shoei Yoh

Shoei Yoh was born in 1940 in Kumamoto-City/Japan.1970 he founded his office 'ShoeiYohArchitects' .In his long career he won many architecture prizes and at this time he teaches at the 'Graduate School of Keio University'. 

Rocco Yim

The "Festival of Vision" in summer 2000 connects the cities Berlin and Hong Kong, while both are in a time of change and reorientation. The 'House of the Cultures of the World' demonstrates  in this context the important attitude to contemporary art made in Hong Kong. 

In this context the pavilion of the architect Rocco Yim from Hong Kong was distinguished in front of the 'House of the Cultures of the World' in a lake.

Bamboo on the one hand has an essential meaning for his static structure for high buildings, on the other hand for temporary stages or Chinese festivals. 

Michael McDonough

Michael McDonough is an architect and furniture designer, who discovered bamboo some years ago. Since that time he attended with the possibilities of this material. 

After some furniture designs he wanted to realize  his project 'Mendocino high-tech Bamboo Bridge'  in 2000 . This should be a demonstration of the constructive qualities of bamboo. This framework construction is able to strain over 33 meters and is also able to compensate more than 60 times of its own weight. The static structure is based on the principle of 'tensegrity', which was coined by Buckminster Fuller and Robert Le Ricolais.   

"The word 'tensegrity' is an invention: a contraction of 'tensional integrity.' Tensegrity describes a structural-relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compressional member behaviors. Tensegrity provides the ability to yield increasingly without ultimately breaking or coming asunder."
( "Synergetics", by R. Buckminster Fuller )

Darrel DeBoer

Timothy Ivory

Timothy Ivory is the Director of Design for BambooFurniture.com and  trained originally as a theatrical  designer at the University of Michigan and New York University, receiving his MA in Design from University of Michigan. He also studied Pantomime with Marcel Marceau's mentor , Etienne Decroux and at the L'Ecole de Cirque Nationale de Paris.

research

Oscar Hidalgo

Jules Janssen

model house by Jules Janssen in Costa Rica