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Bamboo U: The Latest Architecture and News

Why Architectural Models Are Crucial in Making Bamboo Projects a Reality

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Each material has its own peculiarities and, when using it for building, the design and construction process must accommodate these characteristics. A steel-framed building, for example, must be designed with a certain level of accuracy so that components and parts, usually manufactured off-site, fit together during assembly. A wooden building can have its cross sections drastically modified according to the species and strength of the wood used, or even according to the direction of the loads in relation to their fibers. With bamboo, no pole is exactly the same and each one tapers and curves differently, which requires a different approach when designing and building.

But how is it possible to work with a material with so many challenges and possibilities?

Learning Basic Bamboo Joinery With Indonesian Carpenters

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The main objective of the BambooU build and design course is to promote bamboo as a green building material, and to provide tools to architects, designers, builders, engineers, and carpenters from all over the world to value this material and increase its use.

The 2017 version of the course invited its participants to be part of a basic carpentry workshop, in which Indonesian artisans—led by I Ketut Mokoh Sumerta—taught them to build the base of a simple structure in Bamboo, without using other materials and by experimenting with the cutting and joining of different pieces.

See the process of this construction below.