Bamboo in Bali

After four years at the helm of the Secretariat of INBAR, I finally visited the Green School in Ubud village in central Bali.  This is a well-known bamboo development, with a whole range of different buildings made from mainly Dendrocalamus asper bamboo.  The main halls of the school are several floors high, and illustrate how you can make beautiful construction with natural bamboo poles, but there are many other smaller class rooms and buildings on the grounds of the school.  The recent blog by Monique and Marcus De Caro is a very apt description of the Green School with stunning photos.

The school has some 450 students from a varied range of backgrounds and nationalities.  There is also a scholarship programme for promising students from Bali, and the contributions we made for a visit to the Green School are used to pay for the local scholarships.  My wife and I visited during the day, and were asked not to photograph students.  What a considerate request – keep their privacy and avoid them feeling exploited.  My photo is therefore rather empty of people, but for a reason.

The Green School is the brainchild of John Hardy, who came to Bali many years ago and fell in love with the place.  He is a successful jewelry designer, and he created the blueprints for the original buildings. One of the first constructions was the bridge over the local river, which connects the school with the local village on the other side.  The original bridge was damaged during a flood a few years ago, but the replacement is a majestic structure spanning the river.

The more recent additions to the Green School are created by IBUKU, the design and architecture firm lead by his daughter Elora Hardy.  Apart from working on the green School, Ibuku has created the nearby Green Village, a collection of stunning individually owned bespoke bamboo houses.  The “piece de la resistance” in the Green Village is a five floor high building on the slopes of the river, which I could visit, but some of the other buildings are privately owned and cannot be photographed.  Elora has given an inspiring TED talk about her work, which is worth watching. https://www.ted.com/talks/elora_hardy_magical_houses_made_of_bamboo

The latest venture of Elora and John is a boutique hotel in Ubud, called Bambu Indah.   Thisis where I stayed during my visit to Bali.  This little haven of peace is a collection of historical teak wedding houses from Java, with a few specially constructed bamboo buildings to bring it all together.  I have photos, but another blog by Monique and Marcus De Caro captures the beauty of the place much better: http://beautiful-places.de/en/bambuindahubud-bali-thespecialeco-boutique-hideaway-by-john-hardy/

The main dining hall in Bambu Indah is a typical IBUKU construction and the open kitchen is a delight to see.  John explained that keeping the kitchen open for the guests to see what is being cooked gives a feeling of togetherness.  The food in Bambu Indah is healthy and very tasty.  Vegetables are grown on the property, and in the nearby organic garden, and little is needed to enhance the taste artificially.

The other bamboo building in Bambu Indah is a replica of a Sumatra long house, constructed in black bamboo.  Apparently, it is a copy of a historic building, but made from bamboo instead of teak timber.  What a stunning construction.

During our discussions, Elora explained that bamboo has to be treated to avoid insects eating the sugar, and she does this in an environmentally-friendly way.  We visited the bamboo factory where daily deliveries of long bamboo poles are soaked in a bath with a borax solution, made from a natural salt.  The system is a closed loop, and the solution is re-cycled and re-used for many years.  Once the poles are properly immersed (breaking a small hole in all the membranes that define the nodes of the bamboo, so that the liquid can freely flow through the whole length of the pole), they are left to dry before they are used for construction or other manufacturing purposes.  It was exciting to see so many large poles waiting to be used, and this illustrates how vibrant the bamboo construction industry is in Bali.

The other protection against insect infestation is to use large boulders as the foundation stones of the main uprights.  This is an effective way to avoid white ants getting into the base of the culms, and I really like the look.

While my wife and I were staying at Bambu Indah, John asked us to join him for a “trash-walk”.  He explained that every day, he goes out into the village, and collects litter.  He carries a large sac, and has a spear to pin down plastic bottles, bags and anything else he may come across.  John explained that local people are used to sweep the dirt from their courtyard into the road and the local stream.  That was fine in the past, when most of the litter was organic matter.  Nowadays, most of the rubbish contains plastic bags, plastic cups and other plastic items, and this is a sore sight, and it clogs the local streams.  Picking the rubbish up before it reaches the mouth of the river and the shore line is the best way of preventing more pollution of the coast.  I asked whether these litter collection walks have an impact, and John pointed out posters in the village that tell people in local language to avoid littering and to collect rubbish.  These posters are a direct result of John’s efforts, and joining John Hardy and other guests of the hotel on an early morning walk was a real pleasure.

We stayed in Bambu Indah for five days, and what an inspiring visit this was!

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Bamboo for Earthquake Reconstruction

I have just returned from Nepal where I attended the National Consultation Workshop on “Bamboo for Sustainable Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Nepal”. This is one of the activities in a CFC-funded project implemented by INBAR that aims to develop capacity for architects and builders in working with bamboo during the reconstruction after last year’s earthquake on 25 April.

The meeting was hosted by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a fellow member of the Association of International Research and Development Centres for Agriculture (AIRCA).  We had a good turn-out with nearly 100 participants, and the meeting was opened by HE Agni Prasad Sapkota, Minister for Forests and Soil Conservation.

The presentations included recent experiences from two Nepali private sector companies: Himalayan Bamboo (www.himalayanbamboo.com) and abari (www.abari.org). They gave examples of building with bamboo, and stressed that a bamboo house does not have to look like a log cabin, but the final product can have the appearance of a “normal” residence. The following slide from Himalayan Bamboo makes the point:

Nepal already includes bamboo in its national building code and during the past 15 years, INBAR and its Government focal point the Department of Forest Research and Survey have developed a number of bamboo building systems that meet national and international building standards.

One of the recent success stories is that the Ministry of Education has approved a new design for schools from ABARI that includes bamboo to produce the roof trusses. This could help Nepal rebuild many of the 7000 schools destroyed during the earthquake, which was one of the serious effects of the 2015 earthquake. Unicef estimates that nearly 1 million children have been affected as so many classrooms were damaged or destroyed. This recent agreement to use bamboo in those areas where it grows in abundance is a major step forward to resolve the shortage of teaching facilities.

After the presentations we had a lively discussion with the audience, with many technical design questions, comments about supply and demand, interactions about government policies and building guidelines and more. One of the participants informed us that the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Kathmandu will include bamboo in its teaching syllabus.

One of the key messages during this discussion is that bamboo is not a “silver bullet” solution for all reconstruction efforts, and most buildings made with bamboo will have other materials in the construction as well. This point was emphasised during the afternoon visit to the building that houses Madan Puraskar Pustkalaya; the largest archive of Nepali literature.

The original building was badly damaged in the earthquake, and a decision was made to use bamboo as the main structural component in the new construction, and ABARI is taking care of the work. The main vertical supports of the building are made from round bamboo poles that are resting on metal blocks. The bamboo that is used is Bambusa Balcooa; the predominant species in Nepal .

But, while the main structure is made from bamboo poles, the walls of the building are constructed from rammed earth. This is a process of building by adding layers of soil that re compacted under pressure, creating a solid wall that is as hard as concrete. Other walls will be made by covering wire mesh with concrete and lime.

The most striking feature of the building is the roof structure, which is made from many intersection pieces of bamboo.  It looks amazing, and will be covered with normal roofing tiles.

One of the challenges of building with bamboo is how to fix two or more round poles together without cutting the poles. The solution promoted by ABARI is a system that comprises a small metal bar that is inserted across the bamboo poles, and a long screw that is attached to this metal bar and that protrudes beyond the end of the bamboo pole. The screw is then fastened in a metal bracket that holds several bamboo poles together. It is an innovative method that works well, and does not affect the strength of the bamboo poles.

What intrigued me most was that apart from bamboo and rammed earth, the building also has some concrete beams to hold the first floor.

This illustrates that a bamboo building does not have to be made of only bamboo, and ABARI stressed the point that a mix of building materials is the best solution. Their main recommendation is to make the roof trusses from bamboo in new construction, which is the best way to avoid future damage from earthquakes, as they bamboo poles will bend but not break!

 

Land Degradation Neutrality and bamboo industry

I attended the 12th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Ankara.  The International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) is a new Observer to UNCCD, and I am was invited to participate in the high level events.

Today, I was part of the dialogue with the private sector, and I was pleased to give our thoughts about private sector support to Land Degradation Neutrality.

Bamboo is arguably the world’s most important non-timber forest product, representing a growing economic sector worth some 60 billion USD every year. In many countries, potential gains are growing at a rapid pace. For example, in China, production was valued at 19.5 billion USD in 2012 – representing an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2010. And in India, where some 8.6 million people depend for their livelihoods on bamboo and the industries it supplies, the plant was projected to create value equal to 4.4 billion USD this year – around 130 times the 34 million USD recorded in 2003.

This rapid growth is attributable to the plant’s versatility and the multiple uses it lends itself to. Bamboo products include furniture, flooring and construction materials, pulp, paper and fabrics. Engineered materials and innovative fabrication techniques have also enabled the emergence of prefabricated bamboo houses made with laminated bamboo boards, veneers and panels.

Bhutan house under construction

In the years and decades ahead, bamboo’s economic role is likely to expand at an accelerating pace – as other forest resources become strained under climate change, as the imperative to mitigate climate change enforces less dependence on fossil fuels, as water stress forces us to look for crops that do not require irrigation and as research discovers new applications for this valuable plant.

The expansion of bamboo commodity production provides an opportunity to harness the plant’s many environmental benefits. Bamboo is an effective tool to improve soil health and control erosion and slope stability: it has an extensive root system that helps bind soil, and an evergreen canopy that drops leaves year round, providing a perennial source of nutrients. It also thrives on problem soils and steep slopes, playing a potentially important role in efforts to reverse land degradation, and as an effective tool to help achieve Land Degradation Neutrality and support SDG15.

Increasing demand will also deliver economic benefits to rural communities: the rise of industrial bamboo production creates new value chains that rural communities and SMEs can supply and opportunities for them to benefit economically from growing export markets. Bamboo can be harvested on an annual basis, as all bamboos are grass species. This makes it a particularly sustainable opportunity for small and medium business development.

La Florida, Peru

The International Network for Bamboo and Rattan represents currently 41 Member States, containing more than half the world’s population. We believe that there is great potential to link the potential use of bamboo for land restoration with the opportunity to develop profitable value chains for bamboo production.