EcoHouse Research

Bhavna Sharma & Ana Gatóo

 

On the 31st of October 2013, Bhavna Sharma and Ana Gatóo organized a Bamboo Workshop for 30 students of the Architectural Engineering Building Innovation Course, an interdisciplinary course offered to undergraduate architecture and engineering students. The workshop served as an introduction for the students’ term design project. We wanted to show them the basics of building with bamboo for their course project. To start, students were given a 10 minute presentation to gain a brief background on bamboo  and construction methods. Most of the group had no prior knowledge of bamboo.

 

Prior to the workshop, we designed a basic dome of 5 meters in diameter, which was supported by three transverse bundles of canes to provide stability. We also assembled the base ring which would work as the foundation of the dome.

The students were divided into 6 groups, encouraging interdisciplinary groups of engineers and architects. The first step was to have the students erect the dome’s transverse members to build the framework for the dome.

Each group was assigned a quadrant of the dome, canes, string, scissors, and other tools with the objective to freely design and fill in the section as they thought would be the best way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After 2 and a half hours and 250 canes, the dome was complete.

The students learned the best way to make joints and they had, for their first time, bamboo in their hands.