Bamboo Public Lecture with Mr Amar. A talk which was filled with many interesting facts about bamboo that I would not have known unless I attended this talk. Mr Amar started his speech with something very relatable to us architecture students. He told his story of how he got so interested in bamboo. Apparently, back in his design studio days at university, he was intrigued by the characteristics of bamboo plants and begun his journey into creating sustainable buildings. During his second last semester's design studio project, he introduced alot of bamboo into his building. He research and gathered information about bamboo and their benefits. But unfortunately, his lecturer did not like the idea of bamboo and gave him bad grades. From that day on, he wanted to prove them wrong and thus his career into bamboo as a sustainable material in the built environment shot off. I guess the lecturer was the fuel and he was the fire. He then went on to push his idea further in his final semester which started to incorporate steel and concrete
This individual stems of bamboo are called culms. They arise from the underground rhizome and emerge from the ground fully developed. The giant bamboo culms are blackish purple when they emerge. It can grow up to 40cm in a day in favourable conditions. Bamboos take 2-5 years to mature whilst other timber trees take 20 to 100 years to mature; and thus bamboo is a very sustainable source of material. This brings us to the question of the day. Bamboo as a structural material for buildings. Mr Amar explained that bamboo has a very good sustainability but from what we can see in current times, it appears that the trade of bamboo is not really growing in Malaysia. Though we do have the right soil and climate to grow bamboo, yet it is not widely practiced over here as compared to other countries like Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. I think that the reasons could be that it takes skills to build structures out of bamboo and the methods required to treat the bamboos are rather troublesome. As compared to concrete and steel, this materials have high supply and the skills needed to use them are widely available. Yes there
The origin of the word Bamboo comes from the Malay word "Mambu". Malay is the national language of Malaysia and Indonesia. In the late 16th century the Dutch named it "Bamboes" after which it got its Neo-Latin name "Bambusa". Bamboo belongs to the Bambusoideae subfamily of the perennial evergreen grass family Poaceae (Gramineae). Yes! I didn't know that bamboo was actually in the grass family. All this while I always referred to it as a tree. Eitherway, of all grasses, bamboo is the largest and the only one that can diversify into forest. Individual stems of bamboo are called culms. They arise from the underground rhizome and emerge from the ground fully developed. Bamboo does not require fertilizers for optimal growth. Discarded leaves of bamboo provide all needed nutrients when they start to decompose. The video on the right is a timelapse of the growth of the Dendrocalamus Giganteus also known as the giant bamboo. It is able to grow up to 30 to 40 meters high and has diameter of 10-35 cm.
with bamboo. Up til now, his love for bamboo has grown stronger and faster. Fun fact, Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet. It can grow 3 feet in height in 24 hours under appropriate climate conditions. I guess Mr Amar's love for bamboo grew as fast as bamboos.
are many nice buildings made from bamboo but sadly there arent many of them. Somehow I do hope that this material will be used more often in our architecture industry. As our world is becoming more and more polluted, growing more bamboo on this planet could actually help reduce the carbon dioxide in our air. Studies have shown that bamboo releases around 30% more oxygen into the atmosphere and absorbs more carbon dioxide compared to other plants. This in return decreases the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and cleans the air.
I think that more architects should start incorporating bamboo into their designs as it can be readily available in our country. Besides having many benefits, it is visually appealing to the eye with its warmth and relaxing atmosphere that it provides. If architects keep talking about going green and being eco friendly, they should start considering bamboo as their material. Maybe this trade is seldom practiced in the world but one day will emerge as a highly demanded material, we'll never know. Just as the story goes, where the seed of a chinese bamboo plant spends 5 years underground with no growth whatsoever but in the fifth year it grows to over 80 feet tall! I believe that the time where bamboo will play a huge role in our industry will eventually come. We just have to have a little patience in life for bamboo structure to be a widely spread practice.
Well on the lighter side of life, pandas wouldn't go extinct :p
