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2007 International
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CITY Magazine • New York City • May/June 2002
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Eastern cultures have believed in bamboo for centuries. Now supporters closer to home are plotting to retrofit a neighborhood near you. ARCHITECT AND DESIGNER JEFFREE TRUDEAU’S career once found him designing award - winning homes in the hills of New England. Now, 5,000 miles and more than a decade away, he spends his time barefoot in the jungles of Maui, plotting a revolution in the world of design. Progressive and excitedly do-oriented, he and his cohorts around the world have a very clear goal: for you to know that bamboo- the plant that can save the planet- is coming soon to an urban jungle near you. Bamboo has been a staff of life since time began. From the Mings to the Mayans, Incas to modern day India it’s been used in almost every aspect of life- food and fuel, medicine and paper, lumber and everything in between. Towns, fishing fleets, and palaces were made of bamboo- some lasting for 100 years. And it was environmentally friendly and a sustainable resource long before these concepts were invented. “From harvest to home décor,” says Trudeau, “bamboo is consciously constructed. It’s stronger than steel and earth quake resistant, plus it’s got more than 5,000 uses in China alone. They build 50-story scaffoldings with it in Hong Kong. [Recall the opening fight scene in Rush Hour2?] A popular anecdote comes from supporters of the Grow Your Own House concept, reflected in a book of the same name by Colombian bamboo guru and architect Simon Velez: if you take the square footage of your home foundation and plant a bamboo grove in that area, within five years you will have enough bamboo to build your house.“ It’s totally sustainable,” Trudeau continues. “And we’re linking that with design , so you’re going to see things from bamboo that you’d never expect.”
New York designer and bamboo proponent Michael McDonough concurs. “The great thing about bamboo is its strength-to-weight ratio. It’s stronger than steel in tension, stronger than concrete in compression, and more stable than red oak when processed as lumber.” McDonough, co-founder of a bamboo- focused design program at RISD and creator of the world ’s first commercial collection of bamboo furniture, says, “I don’t know of any other material that’s as light as balsa wood but stronger than steel. And aligning those specs with computer modeling has yielded great results: tensile, self-supporting bridges, super-strength bicycles and surfboards, composite lumber, even prototype automobile designs. We need to train the next generation of designers in the use of bamboo,” he continues. “And we’ve got them interested- now we need to expand to the marketplace.” To help make that happen, Trudeau and his partners at Bamboo Technologies- a Maui- based eco-architecture firm- are creating a certification and inspection board to ensure streamlined bamboo production. “The goal is to create standardized procedures- from harvest to Home Depot- so people in design, construction, and zoning will take a look at it.” The certification process will allow bamboo to break out of its current “alternative” designation, and, for the first time in history, make it a viable lumber and design material for use around the world. “Someday,” says Trudeau,“ you’ll go to the hardware store and find posts, beams, paneling, plywood, fencing, all made of bamboo.” The certification board is expected to be recognized by the International Conference of Building Officials this July, and, in the meantime, bamboo’s proponents are making themselves market-ready. Construction is completed on a 70,000 sq ft factory north of Saigon, owned by Seattle-based Bamboo Hardwoods, parent company of Bamboo Technologies. (Trudeau is a partner in both companies.) He recently visited the factory, where 130 pairs of skilled hands fasten bamboo into various products, including custom and pre-fabricated homes that are shipped around the world. Continued>>> |
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URBAN JUNGLE
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