In the past years ago, people in Indonesia used bamboo as the basic material for making houses. Most of traditional houses in Indonesia and Asia use bamboo as building materials, both as structural and non-structural materials. This is because bamboo is easy to find, bamboo can be easily cultivated and harvested in relatively short time and can be reused. Bamboo as building material is easily bent and flexible.
These characters are very suitable for the construction of organic buildings. But after industrial era has begun the use of bamboo as building material become obsolete. Bamboo is considered as cheap and non-permanent material.
But now, after global warming and preservation issues, bamboo as one of building material is widely discussed and reviewed. Some architects and builders today tend to choose bamboo for building materials. High quality wood for construction is rarely found today because of deforestation. Wood also takes a long time to grow back and ready to be used as construction material. While bamboo can be harvested in short time, which is between 3-5 years. For this reason, bamboo has been widely known as a sustainable building material. Bamboo naturally grows in the forest but can also be cultivated on plantations. In some remote villages, bamboo clumps are used as fences or as village boundaries.
Along with the popularity of bamboo for public, especially designers, the use of bamboo as a building material began to be implemented in commercial buildings such as exclusive yet expensive resort hotels and restaurants. Organic buildings generally use arches, splines or other curvature forms. To achieve that shape, curved bamboo is needed. That is the special one of bamboo material.
–sh
