Bamboo House by Elora Hardy

This semester, one of the studio choices was the "Outpost of Cambodia". A project requiring accommodation for the volunteers staying in Cambodia for a short period of time and helping locals building their houses.
One of the main purpose of this project was sustainability.
How do we build a proper house in the tropical climate, that could sustain itself and be functioning without electricity.

One of the first interesting ideas we were given by our tutors was the use of sustainable materials.
Mostly because it is a real life project, you could imagine people do not use concrete or bricks to build their houses in Cambodia. It has to be light weight construction, well cross-ventilated, elevated above the ground for the flood prone areas etc. What everybody came up with at first was the timber construction. Wood is one of our few renewable sources and is easy to build form.

But then we were introduced to the bamboo construction. With the example of the Green School in Bali.
All of us were amazed by the qualities of bamboo! It grows very fast, has a tensile strength of steel and the compression strength of concrete, it is very light weight and durable.

Here is an interesting video about a woman who has built a house made of bamboo in Bali

https://www.ted.com/talks/elora_hardy_magical_houses_made_of_bamboo#t-162829

According to Elora, bamboo is arguably the most sustainable building material available. People in South east Asia have been building with it through out their history. The technology has actually been adopted from the a long time ago. The only reason it hasn't really been used until recently is the inability to protect bamboo from insects.
With all its amazing construction qualities it can be eaten to dust it no time. And due to the climate features and cultural necessities, impermanence of the buildings wasnt an issue. But now, as we adopted that technology and learned how to treat Bamboo from being eaten by insects it can change the way we think about construction and build forever.

The challenge of building with bamboo is in its form. It is a hollow, curved pole, each one different from another, no two bamboo poles are the same. It requires a lot of attention to structural design and also a fair bit of creativity.

This examples show just how we can design without ruining our environment.