Having adopted agroforestry and permaculture as principles for the food-production programme on the site, I am now beginning to think about what forms and materiality may work on the site. The idea of Zone 4 of the permaculture zoning system, an area where materials can be grown, makes a good starting point for considering this.
In most of the research that I undertook, this zone was assumed to be a place for timber production. This is something that I have been considering, and could form part of the planting scheme, as a habitat for wildlife, and a long-term investment of building materials. However, if I am wanting to use site-grown materials as the predominant resource for building, timber will not be practical, due to its long lead-in time. In thinking about possible alternatives, I have come to the idea of bamboo as a building material.
Growth rates of timber species Picea Sitchensis and bamboo species Fargesia Rufa compared
As shown by the diagram above, bamboo is much quicker to grow and mature than timber, meaning that the site would have access to site-grown materials within 3 to 5 years of planting the first batch.
Bamboo also has plenty of precedent of being used as a building material in Asia, and is a versatile and incredibly strong material. It's architectural and structural applications are many, and there are examples of buildings made entirely from bamboo.
Examples of architectural applications of bamboo
As well as being a fantastic construction material, bamboo has many other secondary uses and benefits. With the food and gardening programme that I am looking at, it could be useful for making gardening tools, for example, and the bamboo shoots can also be used in cooking. From an environmental perspective, it is also better at carbon sequestration than trees, and can form a habitat for wildlife.
Examples of other applications and benefits of bamboo
For these many reasons, bamboo seems to be a material with real potential for growing and using in construction in my project, and this is now going to be at the forefront of my investigations over at least the next few weeks, whilst I test it rigorously to see how successful it can be.
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