EcoHouse Research

Simón Vélez

 

On the 25th and 26th May, renowned Colombian architect Simón Vélez honoured the University of Cambridge by his visit to the Department of Architecture. He is recognised worldwide for pioneering the modern use of bamboo in architecture. In collaboration with his friend and colleague Marcelo Villegas and his bamboo craftsmen, he developed the mortar-filled joinery system now used in most of the contemporary bamboo buildings. This system, allows him to design long-span and cantilevered structures, which are his main interest as an architect. During his visit to Cambridge, Simon gave a presentation and hosted a workshop the following day at the Department of Architecture.

 

His evening talk took us through a journey of his life experience as an architect, from concrete buildings to stone, from timber to bamboo. Each photograph of his constructions was combined with a matching anecdote from his building experience and life, giving his talk a pleasant and refreshing personal note. Meticulous in his work, he advocates a rigorous approach to structural engineering. Especially when designing long-span structures, one of his key interests when working with bamboo, he performs thorough tests at full scale which are performed and analysed by the most critical structural engineers available. Over his 40 year career as an architect, Simón Vélez worked on a wide range of constructions; from low-cost houses for the poor to large-scale pavilions found at world exhibitions such as the Expo in Hannover, Germany, 2000.

 

Simón Vélez first came across bamboo as a useful material to construct with, when a wealthy Colombian land owner asked him to build his house using bamboo as its main supporting structure. Still today bamboo is seen as the poor man’s wood and most architects avoid using bamboo as a construction material. This pilot project inspired Vélez to try change this misheld view of bamboo and turn it from the material of the poor to the alternative and sustainable building material of the rich. In December 2009, he received The Principal Claus Award for his contribution towards a positive interaction between culture and development.