Bamboo Architecture

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.

From the world's leading publisher of Architecture and Architectural Practices, comes a look into how VTN Architects have used bamboo to create groundbreaking projects. With the climate crisis raging and awareness of humanity's detrimental impact on the environment now patently apparent, the need for architects to come up with sustainable new solution has never been more pressing. A key part of any green approach to architecture is the use of local natural materials with a low environmental impact. Bamboo, which has been widely used in Asian architecture for centuries as scaffolding and for bridges, pavilions, houses and other structures, is an ideal material in this context: lightweight, strong and readily available. In an effort to meet the challengers of the 21st century, VTN Architects has developed new ways of working with two species of bamboo in particular, the flexible Tam Vong and the sturdier Luong, creating a manufacturing workflow that allows for the production of standardised modules, a knitting technique that enables the material to span large distances and environmentally friendly traditional treatments such as mud-soaking and smoking. In Bamboo Architecture, we see how these methods have been applied in award-winning, groundbreaking projects such as the Wind and Water Café, Diamond Island Community enter, and the majestic Vedana Restaurant, alongside an illuminating introduction by Masaaki Iwamoto and an interview with the studio principal Vo Trong Nghia who offers an inspiring vision for the future of natural, green architecture.

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.

Since 1997, architect and installation artist Markus Heinsdorff has focused much of his work on the potential and possibilities afforded by bamboo. This volume shows how that interest played out in his design for the Sino-German pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

"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.

"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.

This book describes the distribution of bamboo forest and bamboo species for construction, the types and characteristics of both engineered and natural full-culm bamboo materials for construction, the development history and research status of different forms of bamboo architecture. We go on to describe standards, relevant international organizations, research institutions and production and processing enterprises and typical cases. Starting from six aspects, this book systematically describes modern bamboo building development, analyzes the opportunities and challenges faced by the bamboo construction industry and provides guidance for the development of the bamboo construction industry in China. Particularly in Chapter 6, more than 70 examples constructed mostly since 2014 are selected to provide a detailed overview of the use of bamboo as decorative and structural materials. In order to fully explore the potential of bamboo in engineering applications, the authors introduce the use of bamboo construction for transportation facilities (bridges, highway landscape fences and bus stations), landscape, water pipelines and urban municipal tunnels. The authors hope readers are inspired by these most vivid cases and experience the charm of modern Chinese bamboo architecture.

This volume builds upon the 2019 International Bamboo Construction Competition (IBCC 2019) from the Concepts to the Realized Pavilions. Several designed projects are described, and particular attention is devoted to the realized prototypes. It also presents the Bamboo Eye, an important example of architecture realized by INBAR for the 2019 Beijing Horticultural Expo. As such, the volume provides an overview of the use of bamboo poles and engineered bamboo products for temporary and normal constructions, and represents a compact review of the applications of bamboo poles and/or engineered bamboo products in the construction industry. This book will be of interest for researchers, architects and structural engineers in field of bamboo constructions.