Across Asia, bamboo scaffolding has symbolized an intersection of traditional knowledge and modern construction. Hong Kong's skyline is shaped by intricate bamboo scaffolding, yet this time-honored craft is steadily vanishing from the region. Moving east, Indian cities still utilize bamboo scaffolding on building sites throughout the subcontinent, revealing a different kind of paradox.
The bamboo scaffolding building typology—temporary, agile, and deeply rooted in tradition—particularly, the bamboo shed theatre building technique, is recognized as an item of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Hong Kong. As one walks through the city, especially in busy urban districts, it's nearly impossible not to encounter a bamboo scaffold within a five-minute radius. Bamboo scaffolding is arguably the most iconic construction material in Hong Kong, valued for its abundance, sustainability, flexibility, adaptability, and—most importantly—scalability. These qualities have contributed to its widespread use in temporary construction, from building maintenance and renovations to festival stages and sporting events.
However, this once-ubiquitous feature of the urban landscape may be slowly fading from view. A dwindling pool of skilled, younger workers—combined with evolving construction regulations—has contributed to its decline. On March 17, the Development Bureau announced plans to "drive a wider adoption of metal scaffolds in public building works." In practice, this means the Architectural Services Department (ArchSD) will soon require at least 50% of its capital works projects to utilize metal scaffolding. While not a formal ban, the policy signals what many see as the beginning of a gradual phase-out of bamboo scaffolding in public-sector construction.
As one takes a visual tour through the city, one might spot structures that break the rhythm of finished architectural products. These are buildings encased in grids of metal or wooden sections, sometimes wrapped in colored nets, that communicate a moment of construction, repair, renovation, or demolition. They are called scaffolding systems, temporary structures built in the city to aid in the erection or maintenance of buildings. However, they have evolved to speak their own architectural language. As city-making is a continuous process, scaffolds serve as beacons, proposing silhouettes of the height, shape, or forms of new buildings. They step into the sidewalks, acting as shade or obstructions to the flow of human and vehicular traffic. In contrast to the permanence of architecture, they exhibit a sense of temporality that helps communicate time, the growth of neighborhoods, and the evolution of a city.
The new headquarters of the building materials manufacturer HeidelbergCement consists of three interconnected building sections of different heights. The atrium of each building section provides plenty of light and luminance. The building was opened in June 2020 and provides up to 1,000 employees with a state-of-the-art work environment. The architectural firm AS+P Albert Speer + Partner based in Frankfurt was responsible for the project as a general planner, and carried out the design in collaboration with W+Architektur, with the latter providing the consulting office for the client’s project manager.
PERI, one of the leading formwork and scaffolding manufacturers worldwide - and the building materials manufacturer HeidelbergCement - combined their architectural and concrete expertise for the execution of this project. In doing so, the existing limits of PERI’s concrete construction offerings were pushed. The architectural highlights of the project were successfully realized using special PERI formwork elements.
When facing emergencies such as natural disasters, warfare or pandemics, architecture must offer immediate and effective solutions. In these unfortunate circumstances, the priority is usually to solve problems around housing, however, once the emergency is under control, the focus starts to slowly move towards meeting places such as community centers, neighborhood councils and public spaces.
To create new meeting places in emergency situations, scaffolding is a good alternative regarding construction speed and tight budgets. Although they are usually used as temporary structures, they also allow creating a quickly composed space playing with horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, and the combination with other materials such as textile, wood, polycarbonate and metal.
In the late 20th century, restricted by an a small landmass and extreme terrain, the Hong Kong urban area grew to become one of the densest and most vertical places on the planet, with more buildings taller than 500 feet than any other city in the world. But instead of the steel or aluminum structures used as scaffolding in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, the majority of skyscrapers built in Hong Kong and much of Asia used scaffolding systems constructed out of bamboo.
To create the structures, the high strength, lightweight material is strapped together with plastic ties by construction crews, who also use the structure as a ladder for scaling the building. Despite using few safety restraints, crews are able to construct up to 1,000 square feet of bamboo scaffolding in just one day. To protect the structure, nylon gauze is sometimes draped along the outside.
Check out a series of GIFs and images showing how it works after the break. And if you're interested in learning more about bamboo construction materials, check out our Materials catalog.
