Hmmm I wonder if they have considered this is California?

Darrel DeBoer is an architect residing in San Francisco. He has worked extensively with bamboo for many years and recently wrote a book called "Bamboo Building and Culture". He was nice enough to send me 2 CDs packed with photos of his trips to China and Colombia. At the end of 2000, I visited him in San Francisco and we drove to Sacramento to take part in the "Bamboo Smiths". Great time!

I will post his link here when I find it somewhere in the recesses of my bamboo mind..

http://www.healthyhomedesigns.com/architects/architect_detail.php?architect_id=13

Darrel DeBoer
DeBoer Architects

Darrel DeBoer, AIA, president and founder of DeBoer Architects is an internationally known west coast architect named one of the 100 most influential designers by Metropolitan Home. He is an innovator and pioneer in the green architectural revolution and lectures throughout the country. Darrel has facilitated workshops regarding sustainable building techniques and the use of bamboo in architectural applications through UC Berkeley Extension, the Academy of Art College, the County of Alameda and the City of San Francisco. Darrel is current president of the Northern California Chapter of the American Bamboo Society and is the author of numerous articles on Bamboo and alternative materials. He is also the author of the Bamboo chapter in several new books on natural construction systems and is the co-author of Building Less Waste, for the Alameda County Waste Management Authority. He is also co-author of Architects/ Designers/ Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR)’s Ecological Architectural Resource Guide and the author of Building with Bamboo. His slides on applicable uses of Bamboo in the U.S., Germany, China, Colombia and Costa Rica could make you believe that "Bamboo" is the answer to all questions. Darrel takes a healthful, cost-effective approach to architectural design and detailing. He designs with a couple of specific goals in mind:* Placing the needs of the occupants first. He takes into consideration the sun’s path,daylighting opportunities, temperature swings, views, smells, adjacencies.* Creating buildings that nurture their occupants.* Building in ways that will be sustainable into the future – incorporating wise material choices for durability and long-term cost benefits. His most recent work - a home with bamboo roof trusses and strawbale / earthen plaster walls was featured on Home & Garden Television’s (HGTV) Extreme Homes. This strawbale home plan entitled “Sun, Straw & Earthen Floor” is available through Healthy Home Designs

http://www.deboerarchitects.com/BambooBuildingAndCulture.html

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Simón Vélez pages 1-7

Velez and Villegas 8-9

Bamboo Building 10-31

Hanover World Expo 32-35

Low Cost Housing Solution 36-40

Bamboo Renaissance in South America 41-44

About the author:

Named by Metropolitan Home magazine in 2001 as one of the 100 most influential designers, Darrel DeBoer is a Northern California architect who has built a dozen bamboo structures in this country. He became enthused about the material after seeing Simón Vélez’ structures with 30 foot cantilevers and 60 foot clear spans, entirely of South American native bamboo. DeBoer has researched bamboo construction techniques in Asia, Central and South America. He is the author of the Bamboo Chapter in several books, including Alternative Construction, and The Art of Natural Building. He now teaches workshops of several days to a week duration on the details of bamboo construction.

About bamboo:

As strong as steel in tension, timber bamboo can grow as fast as 3 feet in a day, can be sustainably harvested every year, using a small fraction of the land required by trees for the same structural work. The waste (leaves and branches) can be as nutritious an animal feed as alfalfa. Bamboo can convert society’s waste nitrogen, mulch and water into a construction material that fixes 17 times as much carbon per acre as trees. Darrel will cover proper tool use and joinery as well as design ideas that avoid the more difficult / time-consuming joints.

I am an architect practicing in the western United States intrigued by the structural qualities of bamboos. It is a huge challenge to introduce bamboo into U.S. building practices. But, there have been some amazing structures built with bamboo around the world, and I would like to share a few that I have seen:

20,000 square foot pavilion at Expo2000 in Hannover, Germany, by architect Simon Velez

Here is the website that describes the pavilion, as well as the low-cost house Velez designed for the Grow Your Own House book http://www.zeri.org/projects/growyourownhouse.htm (photos by Darrel DeBoer)

Automobile bridges with spans up to 150 feet have been built of bamboo by Jorg Stamm in Colombia (see the Aachen site below for more on Jorg) photo by Jorg Stamm

Bamboo has been documented with over 1,500 different uses. In the area of building, that includes fences, gates, trellises, and every part of a structure. Bamboo tools, utensils, and buildings are an important part of life for half the world's population. In temperate climates around the world, bamboo supply can be maintained indefinitely while maintaining erosion control, watershed integrity, soil health. What we lack is Summer rain.

As a building material, bamboo is special ­ both because it handles long spans and has such intrinsic beauty. The main reason we can – for the first time – look seriously at this plant is the joinery system developed by Simon Velez and others in Colombia.

It is the process of establishing the production system appropriate to our culture and time that is most important to think through now. Gaining access to inexpensive land not usable for any other purpose, choosing appropriate species, allowing the time for maturity, understanding the aesthetics of working with cylindrical materials in a predominantly rectilinear society, learning to find exceptional working stock, and developing a design approach that takes full advantage of both the strength and beauty of the timber bamboo – these are our challenges.

Websites
American Bamboo Society -- especially the Species Source List (all bamboos in cultivation in the U.S., sizes, temperature & shade tolerances) http://www.bamboo.org/abs/
1000 things bamboo -- http://www.bambus.de/infos/1000/indexx.php

Building the ZERI pavilion -- http://www.zeri.org/pavilion/slideshow/pav_small/slideshow.asp

German university site -- http://bambus.rwth-aachen.de

Bamboo Flooring -- http://www.4specs.com/s/09/09649.html

Code approval in the U.S. -- http://www.icbo.org/ICBO_ES/Acceptance_Criteria/pdf/ac162.pdf

International standards by the author of the ICBO Acceptance Criteria, Dr. Jules Janssen -- http://www.bwk.tue.nl/bko/research/Bamboo/iso.htm

An article I wrote that went to every building official in the U.S. -- http://www.icbo.org/Building_Standards_Online/read.cgi?file=./Features_and_Articles/archive/961871555.archive&action=Features_and_Articles

In Spanish, from the country getting the most from bamboo -- http://www.asosismica.org/

Walk through several Velez buildings -- http://home.earthlink.net/~montecito/irongrass.htm

Find uses for the much more common small diameters and easily-made splits; Bamboo in tension is at its best (photo by Jaqueline Lytle)

Gazebos, trellises, and arbors like the one I did above are some of the first structure types that people think are associated with bamboo. They're great, as long as one accepts that they won't last long once exposed to the sun and rain. Bamboo performs about like hardwoods and our douglas fir structural lumber, which means it splits in the first couple of years of exposure, then it bleaches gray in the sun. As long as the powder post beetles don't find it, it will last for years, as long as you're ok with the way it looks. Trellises can last for 20 or 30 years, less in humid, wet climates. And the ability of this lightweight, strong material to totally transform landscapes quickly is unsurpassed. But, that's not even the best use of the material. Our challenge is to find ways to use it indoors where it's luster is preserved and it can continue to look attractive indefinitely.

Sustainability
As an architect with an interest in maintaining my supply of building materials, I find that bamboo meets the basic criteria for continuous use. It is:

Renewable - The Phyllostachys varieties, most suitable for growing and building in the U.S. where we must deal with frost, will grow 12-18 inches a day once a grove is established. Culms (the living poles) emerge as large as they will ever be in that first six-week spurt, then spend the next three years replacing sugars and water with silica and cellulose. Structurally, they are only useful after that third year, which is about when the culm is not needed by the plant.

5” dia. P. vivax in the SF bay area. The roots extend into the lawn, excess shoots are transparently mowed

Plentiful - Our current meager U.S. supply of timber-quality bamboo can increase manifold within a decade with species selection appropriate to the microclimate, water, and nutrient availability. For now, temperate varieties such as Moso are being imported from Asia. These are well suited to being grown here.

Local - Bamboo concentrates a large amount of fiber in a small land area, creating that rare situation in which a single person can be both producer and consumer of a building material. A bamboo builder is not dependent upon the whims of the marketplace and can create a long-term source of material. Few other materials, besides earth, can make such claims.

Waste-reducing - As is nature's general practice, nothing goes to waste. The leaves are high in nitrogen, making good feed for livestock. Any fallen leaf compost goes to fertilize the next generation. http://esi.athenstn.com/wwt/Bamboo_Bioremediation.html But, even more enticing are the statistics for pulling carbon out of the air, potentially reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that contributes to the greenhouse effect. According to the people at the Zero Emissions Research Institute (ZERI) who built the bamboo pavilion at the top of this page, a bamboo forest can sequester 17 times as much carbon as a typical tree forest. In a country where a third of the greenhouse gases are attributed to buildings, imagine a building material that, when used locally, not only doesn't contribute to global warming, it solves some small portion of the problem.

STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES
Bamboo is an extremely strong fiber; with twice the compressive strength of concrete and roughly the same strength-to-weight ratio of steel in tension. In addition, testing (Janssen '97) has shown that the hollow tube shape gives a strength factor of 1.9 over the equivalent solid. The reason is that, in a beam, the only fibers doing work are in the top (compression) and bottom (tension). The center is dead weight.

The strongest bamboo fibers have a greater shear strength than structural woods, and they take much longer to come to ultimate failure. However, this ability of bamboo to bend without breaking makes it unsuitable for building floor structures because we have a very low tolerance for deflection, and few here will accept a floor that feels "alive." On the other hand, bamboo as a 3/4 inch thick finish floor is an appropriate substitute for the standard oak because it installs the same way, is harder and expands less.

Because of the relative scarcity of timber bamboo in the U.S., one of the best uses for this giant grass is as a truss, taking advantage of both its strength and its beauty.

Garden structure for Eric Lloyd Wright with new forms of triangulation and stainless bands to resist splits (design by author)

Preferred Joinery

The “fish-mouth” is the joint required when all the poles are in the same plane – as in the “Not This” truss shown above. Though common in South America, it is very labor intensive and most gringos prefer to avoid it.

The joint of preference is allowed by the three dimensional truss in the second diagram above, developed by Simón Vélez in Colombia. This one is a simple bolted connection, but because the bolt alone concentrates too much force on the wall of the bamboo, the void between nodes is filled with a solidifying mortar, increasing the surface area of the joint significantly.

“Fish-Mouth” Joint

In the U.S., we think of trusses as a bunch of pieces that all happen in the same plane and all the pieces run into another. Put a metal plate connector on top of each joint and it's done. With bamboo, you're better off thinking in three dimensions: If the pieces run past one another, they can easily be bolted together, avoiding the dreaded "Fish-mouth" joint that requires a coped, curving fit at both ends - a very admirable and beautiful solution but one that takes forever to get right. So, with bamboo, the more complex and interesting design can paradoxically be the easier one to make.

I have also written a much more extensive book that details joinery, tools, structures I have built in the U.S., as well as my research in Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and China. Click on the Bamboo Book link to find out more.

http://www.deboerarchitects.com/default.asp

Thank you Joao for using my pictures. The link was much apreciated. www.Koolbamboo.com

I would like to know where in the US I can purchase construction bamboo to rebuild my bar on my lanai - is there any place in Florida?

Michael LaPlante

We are in Menlo Park, CA and want to be able to buy construction bamboo to build railings for a lanai for our back yard. Can anyone help me. We are right near San Francisco or even closer to Stanford University. A 75 mile radius will do. Help!

We are seeing the portential for developing countries.

I am a second level master student in architecture in politecnico di milano in Italy. I am a green architecture and sustainability enthusiast. My thesis is on the potential of bamboo as an alternative material for construction in Kenya in East Africa. I plan to pursue these studies back in Kenya where I practice as an architect and teach in Jomo Kenyatta University. I am looking for an individual or organisation willing to partner with me in this research in my country, Kenya as well as in East Africa in general.

I would like to know what king of process and/or treatment is necessary to allow bamboo to be a viable construction material, and how do theymake hard wood floors - the proces-of bamboo as it is round?
Thank you,

Regine Barjon
rbarjon@tampabay.rr.com