Building With Bamboo

Bamboo. Everyone knows it's strong and it grows like bamboo kudzu. And of course it's very hard. Not just hard hard, but industrial hard:

Forget steel and concrete. The building material of choice for the 21st century might just be bamboo.

This hollow-stemmed grass isn't just for flimsy tropical huts any more — it's getting outsized attention in the world of serious architecture. From Hawaii to Vietnam, it's used to build everything from luxury homes and holiday resorts to churches and bridges.

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"The relationship to weight and resistance is the best in the world. Anything built with steel, I can do in bamboo faster and just as cheaply," said Colombian architect Simon Velez, who almost single-handedly thrust to the vanguard of design a material previously associated with woven mats and Andean pan pipes.

via the always interesting Stamping out a Living, which asks, naturally: "Ah, but can you stamp it?"

Comments

[moishe]

couple bamboo with modular building practices and you eliminate a shit load of material waste and can erect buildings very quickly and probably cheaply (steel prices crazy). my question would be its fire resistance? perhaps you can fire spray it like you do to steel. i like the concept.
moish