Bamboo Architecture Unboxed

"Bamboo Architecture Unboxed" is a comprehensive guide that bridges traditional craftsmanship with contemporary design techniques to revolutionise the bamboo construction landscape. Authored by experts Jorg Stamm and Munir Vahanvati, this book explores the remarkable strength, sustainability, and aesthetic flexibility of bamboo through geometrical principles. Readers are taken on an enlightening journey from the foundational elements of bamboo design to intricate architectural forms inspired by nature. Key geometries such as hyperbolic paraboloids, hyperboloids, tetrahedrons, and geodesic domes are meticulously demystified, offering a blend of historical context, vivid imagery, practical wisdom, and step-by-step construction guides. Whether you're an architect, builder, or enthusiast of sustainable materials, "Bamboo Architecture Unboxed" unfolds as a transformative narrative, inviting you to push creative boundaries and shape a future where eco-conscious constructions and organic silhouettes form the core of our built environment.

Bambusa guadua, the tropical giant bamboo, is the most versatile, reliable architectural material of its native mountainous regions. Bamboo's delightful exterior and exotic reputation obscures its oaklike strength. 'New Bamboo' is a colour portfolio of contemporary structures and decorative designs demonstrating the appeal of building with natural materials for the modern eye. Properly treated, bamboo is as reliable as prime-grade hardwoods, beautiful in its own right, and suitable for commercial and residential structures in any climate. This is an anthology of bamboo construction by different experts: an agronomist, architects, a designer, and a builder, that showcases projects in Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, and Colombia, where this product has been used as a traditional construction material for centuries. Also covered are France and Germany, where architects are discovering the delights of working with bamboo. Guadua is beautiful but not so delicate that it cannot be used in commercial structures like the auditorium-size pavilion built for the Hannover Expo 2000. Here are delightful details and rugged outbuildings that show bamboo as a most natural design element.

"Bamboo has been used as building material for many centuries in all regions in which it grows, especially in Asia, Africa and South America. Today it is gaining in popularity also among Western architects and engineers due to its reputation of a quickly replenishing and therefore sustainable raw material. In addition, its tensile as well as compressive strength, which can compete with those of steel, stone and concrete, make bamboo a very desirable construction material. The range extends from traditional building styles and their modern interpretation to the combination of bamboo with other materials. Frequently, beyond its use for purely construction purposes it also serves as a primary design element. This volume presents contemporary projects that show the impressive versatility of its usage"--Provided by publisher.

Traditionally a building material of hot climate zones in Asia and Latin America, bamboo is increasingly discovered by architects of the Northern hemisphere as well. It is lightweight, highly elastic and ductile, and in addition offers qualities especially in demand in an era of limited resources, renewability and abundant availability. Architects and engineers have significantly widened the applications of bamboo in recent years and today even wide-span bridges can be built from it. Impressed with its technical and aesthetic possibilities, European, Japanese and North American architects have adopted bamboo for a variety of construction tasks, ranging from exclusive private residences to experimental pavilions, and from airy canopies to schools or museums. The book provides a detailed manual for bamboo constructions and presents a broad selection of built examples, among them the spectacular bamboo pavilions of the 2010 Shanghai World Exposition, a parking garage in Leipzig, Germany, the Nomadic Museum in Mexico City and Richard Rogers’ Terminal 4 at Madrid Airport.

Although traditionally a building material of the warmer climate zones, bamboo is becoming increasingly popular amongst architects in the northern hemisphere; bamboo has several advantages – it is very stable, of low weight, and highly elastic, in addition to being readily available as well as renewable. The applications of bamboo in architecture have become significantly wider and diversified, so that today, even structures with large spans – such as bridges – are built with this material. The new and revised second edition of this manual provides a practical, systematic overview of the numerous potential applications and processing methods of this renewable material. The comprehensive presentation of groundbreaking bamboo buildings has been updated with more recent projects.