In a bold move to revolutionize the construction industry, the Institution of Structural Engineers has called for architects to be “bamboo-ready” as they published a manual for designing permanent buildings made of the versatile material. This comes as a growing number of innovative projects around the world are showcasing the potential of bamboo as a sustainable, low-carbon alternative to traditional building materials like steel and concrete.
One such example is the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru, India, where bamboo tubes make up the ceiling and pillars of Terminal 2, proving that the material can be used for large-scale infrastructure projects. Across the globe, the Ninghai bamboo tower in northeast China, standing at over 20 metres tall, is claimed to be the world’s first high-rise building constructed using engineered bamboo.
The use of bamboo is not limited to grand architectural statements; it has also found a home in more intimate settings. The Green School in Bali, Indonesia, features a striking bamboo-made arc that serves as the gymnasium, showcasing the material’s versatility and potential to reshape sustainable architecture.
Bamboo’s resilience has also been put to the test, with composite bamboo shear walls proving to be resistant to earthquakes and extreme weather in countries like Colombia and the Philippines, where sustainable, disaster-resilient housing has been built using locally sourced materials.
The construction industry is a significant contributor to global carbon emissions, with cement and cementitious materials accounting for more than half of the sector’s impact. As urbanization continues to put pressure on the demand for housing and infrastructure, the challenge lies in meeting this demand while staying on track to achieve net-zero targets.
Bamboo’s fast growth rate, ranging from three to six years compared to the decades-long growth of timber, makes it a particularly suitable building material. Neil Thomas, the director of Atelier One, a UK-based structural engineering company that worked on the Green School project, notes that “everything you can do with timber, you can do with bamboo.”
However, the manual published by the Institution of Structural Engineers points to “knowledge gaps” that have prevented the full utilization of bamboo’s potential, partly due to the influence of colonization on technical education. To address this, the lead author of the manual, David Trujillo, an assistant professor in humanitarian engineering at the University of Warwick, hopes it will “empower engineers to use their local resources” such as bamboo.
Bamboo is already readily available in tropical and subtropical climates, and changes in the Mediterranean climate have led to larger varieties being grown as a crop in Portugal, potentially opening the door for wider use of the material in Europe. Thomas believes bamboo can serve as an “inspiration to architects and engineers looking for low-carbon materials,” noting that it is suitable for buildings up to two storeys tall.
Trujillo adds that bamboo-constructed buildings can act as carbon stores, and the harvesting of the crop could help with the recovery of soil that has been degraded by monoculture. Additionally, growing bamboo requires minimal pesticides or fertilizers, making it an environmentally friendly choice.
The manual’s authors hope it will help persuade lecturers around the world to incorporate bamboo into their curriculum, ensuring that the next generation of engineers and architects are “bamboo-ready” and equipped to lead the green building revolution.
