Grow Your Own House

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Bamboo, which has been used as building material for centuries and is widely available (35 million acres worldwide are covered in bamboo), is being rediscovered today. Its cost-effectiveness and ability to endure adverse environmental forces make it one of the preeminent construction materials on the planet. Bamboo's unique aesthetic appearance has been exploited in design and furniture building.

The highly visual and engaging Grow Your Own House will open your eyes to the beauty and lightness of bamboo structures and designs. Bamboo -- a widely available and renewable resource almost as strong as steel, yet very light -- lends itself to architectural experiments. Buckminster Fuller, Frei Otto, Renzo Piano, Shoei Yoh, and Arata Isozaki are a few of the millions of people worldwide using bamboo to create space and structure around them.

Author and architect Simon Velez pioneered bamboo construction in his home country of Colombia. His most recent and spectacular project, which is prominently featured in Grow Your Own House, is the Expo 2000 pavilion for the ZERI Foundation. At over 120 feet in diameter and over 50 feet high, it is one of the largest bamboo structures in the world.

Introduction

Simón Vélez and Bamboo Architecture

The ZERI Pavilion and Sustainable Architecture (Jean Dethier)

From the Test Report on the ZERI Pavilion (Klaus Steffens)

?I am a roofing architect? (interview with Simón Vélez)

Biography and Select Works

Basic Elements

The Support

The Wall

The Window, The Door

The Connection

The Floor

The Roof

Meta-Architecture

Grow You Own...House

Sustainability

Botany and the Use of Bamboo (Walter Liese)

Cutting and Processing

The ?Global Village? is Made of Bamboo

The Bamboo Cult

A Plant Travels the World

From Globalization ro Regionalization

Low Budget

Dancing Houses

Natural Intelligence

Frei Otto on Bamoo Architecture

Organic Shapes

Experiments with Bamboo Domes (Eda Schaur)

Grid Matrices

Synergies

Testing Bamboo

Composite Materials

High Science + Simple Tech
Bamboo is Beautiful
Picture Credits
Bibliography