Bamboo

Bamboo is one of the most amazingly versatile and sustainable building materials available.

Botanically classified as a grass Bambusa guadua, bamboo is one of the fastest growing and easy to harvest plant on the earth. It grows remarkably fast and in a wide range of climates. It is exceedingly strong for its weight (stronger, in fact, than steel) and can be used both structurally and as a finish material. Bamboo is alternately flexible or stiff (depending on the application) both functional and decorative. The dried stems are extremely sturdy and lend themselves to a multitude of uses. The canes are beautiful when exposed and because of this it enhances appeal of building (with natural material) for the modern eye. And they can be cut in such a way as to be re-combined into useful products such as flooring, lining the ceilings or walls.

There is a long vernacular tradition to the use of bamboo in structures in many parts of the world, especially in more tropical climates, where it grows into larger diameter canes. One tricky aspect to the use of bamboo is in the joinery; since its strength comes from its integral structure, it cannot be joined with many of the traditional techniques used with wood. This is where the old ways of building with bamboo can be especially informative. In Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, and Colombia, this product has been used as a traditional construction material for centuries.

Bamboo is beautiful but not so delicate that it cannot be used in commercial structures. Bamboo is an extremely strong fiber; with twice the compressive strength of concrete and roughly the same strength-to-weight ratio of steel in tension. In addition, testing (Janssen '97) has shown that the hollow tube shape gives a strength factor of 1.9 over the equivalent solid. The reason is that, in a beam, the only fibers doing work are in the top (compression) and bottom (tension). The center is dead weight.

We see Bamboo bridges often made in north-east part of India and Asia to span the rivers or water-streams. The strongest of the Bamboo fibers have greater shear strength than structural woods and so Bamboo has a tendency to bend but not to break. And this is the quality which makes it very much useful for spanning the bridges. Automobile bridges with spans up to 150 feet have been built of bamboo by Jorg Stamm in Colombia. The auditorium-size pavilion (20,000 Sq. Ft.) was built for the Hannover Expo 2000 in Germany by architect Simon Velez. Here is the website that describes the pavilion, as well as the low-cost house Velez designed for the Grow Your Own House book http://www.zeri.org/projects/growyourownhouse.htm

Bamboo has been documented with over 1,500 different uses. In the area of building, that includes fences, gates, trellises, and every part of a structure. Bamboo tools, utensils, and buildings are an important part of life for half the world's population. In temperate climates around the world, bamboo supply can be maintained indefinitely while maintaining erosion control, watershed integrity, soil health.
I expect that the value of bamboo as a building material will only become more apparent as we move toward a time of wood scarcity and high costs of energy.


Read the link below for more details of Bamboo Construction :-
http://www.koolbamboo.com/Modern%20bamboo%20architecture.pdf