Bamboo Style

Credits

Foreword by Linda Garland

Bamboo is a rising star among organic building materials. Designers who for years have been using hardwoods are becoming enchanted with the aesthetics of bamboo, a readily sustainable material for building homes, designing furniture, and crafting accessories.

Bamboo is one of nature’s miracle plants. Its ratio of strength to weight is better than graphite, and it is the fastest-growing plant on earth. In the past hundred years alone, we have seen bamboo’s versatility in Edison’s light bulb filament, in gramophone needles, and in airplane wings.

This book is the spirit of hope and beauty, and the inspiration is bamboo.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Chippendale in England created a collection of bamboo furniture that became trendy. This gave birth to 150 bamboo-furniture factories in England. There have been other manifestations of interest in bamboo design through the years.

In 1995, a group of bamboo advocates created the backdrop for the Fourth World Bamboo Congress. Gale Goldberg and twenty others who believed in the importance of taking action worked night and day—some for years, others for months—to make the conference a reality, all of us volunteering our skills for bamboo, the timber of the future. There was a strong feeling that what we were doing was important. Some, like Gale, were inspired to take this new knowledge and create possibilities for others to learn. And so this book is born.

Many other beginnings took place at the 1995 conference in Bali. Simon Véléz, who had never left his homeland of Colombia, was invited to present his work and we were all smitten with his architectural genius. Gunter Pauli from the ZERI (Zero Emissions Research Initiative) Foundation was also in attendance, and seeds were sown for the Hannover Project, which single-handedly took the perception of bamboo to the level of a high-tech engineering material. German building-code officials approved the bamboo species of Guadua as a structural material for the ZERI Pavilion at the Hannover 2000 World’s Fair. The program on the properties of bamboo in the industrial design division and furniture department at the Rhode Island School of Design is now in its fifth year. All of these foundations have added to the understanding of the appropriate use of the material.

My fascination with bamboo started as a child in Ireland, where the Gulf Stream allowed us to have tropical gardens. Later, in the early 1970s in Bali, where I had made my home, I grabbed onto the outrigger of a fisherman’s boat as I surfaced from a dive. To my surprise, the outrigger turned out to be a species of giant timber bamboo. I convinced the fisherman to take me to the forest where the boatmen harvested their bamboo poles. I will never forget the first time I saw those giants—nearly ten inches in diameter and a hundred feet tall—overlapping in Gothic arches almost like a jungle cathedral. And so my bamboo journey started.

The first step was a furniture collection that I created and used in many projects over the years. You may have seen the furniture in the Architectural Digest issues on Richard Branson’s island, Necker; David Bowie’s house on Mustique; and Ian Fleming’s house in Jamaica, which is now owned by Chris Blackwell. My bamboo pieces can be found in castles in Scotland, palaces in India, and beach houses in Fiji. Across the globe, the beauty of these giants continues to captivate.

And so we continue. I love what Gale is adding to this tapestry that has for thousands of years continued to be contemporary. It is my hope that, after being inspired by her bamboo journey, you, too, will join the ever-growing family of believers.

Linda Garland is the founder of the Environmental Bamboo Foundation, Bali, Indonesia, and the Queen of Bamboo.

Introduction

The human form and spirit would have much to emulate in the power of bamboo: standing upright, yet strong and supple; being flexible yet resilient in light of nature’s forces; being grounded with an extensive rootedness to the earth yet light and airy in response to the slightest breeze.

The Asian cultures admire, respect, and honor the beauty of bamboo—a super-fast-growing and self-renewing plant. With a few simple tools, this amazing grass, so rich in its diversity, is easily shaped into more than a thousand uses, some of which are detailed below:

Bamboo scaffolding is split and fastened to building façades by lashing lengths together to secure the necessary support to build the building higher. Hong Kong high-rises are wrapped with a bamboo framework that eases the steel building’s construction and exterior maintenance. These structures are breathtaking when viewed through an intricate web—a basket of bamboo.

Bamboo creates music. In a range of forms, bamboo becomes musical instruments, from the slit drum and marimba played by the Bamboo Orchestra of Japan to the pan flutes and the thin sliver that is shaped into a vibrating reed for melodious notes of many wind instruments—a saxophone, clarinet, and oboe; a Balinese tingklik (a bamboo xylophone) is played in the gamelan percussion orchestra. A Japanese shakuhachi is a type of flute made from the bamboo rhizome, the underground stem. An Australian Aboriginal didgeridoo is a long and large hollowed bamboo horn. A rain stick is a percussion instrument—a seed-filled hollow tube of bamboo—originally made and used in Chile and Africa.

Before paper was made and used, the Chinese wrote books on bamboo strips an inch or two wide that were joined together with fine silk threads. Now, bamboo pulp is formed into textured paper.

A slender bamboo stalk becomes a writing implement for bamboo poetry or an ink brush for Japanese sumi-e (bamboo paintings).

Tender spring bamboo shoots add a flavorful crunch and crispy texture to a Chinese banquet. Bamboo beer is a refreshing fermented drink.

A Chinese herbal remedy used for kidney distress is formulated from a combination of the underground stem of the black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) and other plant ingredients.

The tabasheer of some tropical bamboos—a white, crystalline silica substance secreted on the inside surface of the stalk between the nodes, or divisions—has been used to treat bronchial ailments and has a reputation of being an aphrodisiac.[¹]

Historical Uses

More than a thousand years ago, the Japanese assimilated elements of Chinese culture into their own. While the Chinese use bamboo in engineered structures, the Japanese favor the beauty of bamboo in ornamentation and decoration, as well as for use in ritual ceremonies.

Tortoiseshell bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens var. heterocycla), with its nodes climbing alternately up the culm (stalk) at nearly forty-five-degree angles, is treasured for its unusual character and is formed into flower vases, plant pots, and lamp bases.

In the Japanese home, woven bamboo creates patterned ceilings, forms moldings and trims, and is often positioned as a single column located in an auspicious corner. Chairs, benches, and tables are consciously designed with a bamboo aesthetic—simple, clean lines, Zen-like and sparse, sensitive to the natural bent of bamboo. A fine, skillfully shaped bamboo whisk whips the froth in the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

Outside the home, bamboo fences delineate and decorate. Sometimes they provide privacy; at other times, the open weave of tied culms becomes an artistic vertical divide separating garden paths and plantings.

The Asians are not alone in demonstrating the multiple uses of bamboo. In another part of the bamboo world—Colombia, South America—giant bamboo timbers bolted together in triangulated architectural trusses are so strong that they can freely span more than eighteen feet (six meters) while supporting a heavy roof of cement, steel mesh, and clay tile. Thinner bamboos can be a woven basket inside a greenhouse or attached between ceiling rafters, forming a herringbone pattern.

In Ecuador, architects and builders are designing innovative and affordable housing constructed of bamboo. Full bamboo culms are flattened and their nodes (horizontal joints) scraped clean. Panels of these crushed bamboo culms span between wooden supports, forming the building’s exterior skin. In another creative solution, a pool pavilion’s hyperbolic roof is shaped with sturdy bamboo poles.[²]

At Catholic University in Brazil, the health-care industry is benefiting from creative designs of lightweight and strong bamboo walkers for both children and seniors.[³]

Where and How Bamboo Grows

Bamboo grows prolifically between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Some tropical culms are as thick as a plantation worker’s thigh. From deep within the bamboo forest, tapering stalks arch toward each other, creating a shade canopy of delicate leaves and branches. Here, only small patches of filtered sunlight reach the ground where the spring shoots grow.

The physiology of this remarkable plant is complex. Technically, it is a grass. Depending on growing conditions, some species stay low to the ground, reaching only six to twelve inches high. Other giant grasses tower above at heights of more than a hundred feet. Some plants are pencil-thin; others have diameters of nearly a foot. Some are hollow between the nodes; others are solid. Some gracefully grow tall and straight; others are irregularly shaped with crooks and bends and alternating humps, much like the protective shells turtles carry with them.

Unlike woody trees that grow bigger around each year, a bamboo shoot emerges from the ground with its thickness fixed. The culm spends a single season of growing time—about six weeks—elongating like a telescope (wider at the base and midsection, tapering at the top) to its full height and development.

The dominant colors of these extended bamboo poles are shades of green. Certain species have surfaces that are yellow, purple, brown, or black. Other culms stand out in appearance with their blotchy spots, striped stalks, or variegated leaves.

The colorful immature culm is protected with a heavy, leafy covering called a sheath, which contains growth hormones used by the maturing plant. At maturity, the sheath drops off and becomes nutritious mulch. After the bamboo stalk has finished its vertical growth extension, branches and leaves form at the nodes. Bamboo is strengthened by these horizontal joints (nodes), which are spaced at regular intervals six to eighteen inches apart.

While trees contain cellulose fibers that are made only of lignin, bamboos contain cellulose fibers with lignin and silica—the same hard, glassy substance found in sand, and a big factor in bamboo’s high density, strength, and hardness. Bamboo fibers are nearly ten times as long as those found in trees.[⁴]

During bamboo’s growth activity aboveground, the rhizomes, or underground stems, are also busy. The gnarly, dense network with smaller intertwining roots spreads to create a strong foundation in a growing zone found about two to three feet below the soil’s surface.

The underground structure of the rhizomes determines whether bamboo is grouped into the category of clumper or runner. Clumpers sprout a new shoot from a tightly spaced rhizome and root system. Runners send out extensive lengths of rhizomes that can pierce the ground surface many yards away from their origin.

Dedicated researchers have identified more than a thousand species grouped in over a hundred genera. They rely on the flowering of the bamboo to name the species. The infrequent flowering of bamboos, however, makes the process of identification difficult. Some bamboos bloom once every