Bamboo has always been an amazing building material. Ancient cultures like China have used it for housing for thousands of years. Throughout the world, bamboo is prized for its strength, incredible lightness and flexibility. With greater tensile strength than steel and higher compression strength than concrete, bamboo has always been in great use, but its real potential as a building material has never really been fully unlocked – until now.
Recent technological breakthroughs have been applied to bamboo to create Engineered Bamboo, converting it into laminated products that improve its inherent properties and characteristics, something which was previously only done with wood.
However, the results are even more superior with bamboo due to its inherent strength, lightness and flexibility.
Strip-laminated and strand woven bamboo
The first type of engineered bamboo to be created was “strip laminated”, where narrow strips of the outer part of the bamboo are cut and laminated together into boards that can be used in a multitude of ways just like timber.
But, of course, being made from bamboo they are so much lighter than equivalent lengths of timber enabling them to be used in many new and different ways to timber.
Another form of engineered bamboo is “strand woven” bamboo, which is often used for flooring. To make strand woven bamboo, the pole of the bamboo plant is cut, stripped-down, shredded into fibres and woven together with a resin. This product is then compressed under extreme heat and pressure to form a solid block of strand woven bamboo which is then machined into planks just like timber.
Colour stains can be added to the product to create various looks and styles as well as finishing lacquers etc.
Fused, carbonised, bamboo decking
Using a patented process, the bamboo is subject to a 2-stage process of high heat which “carbonises” it, removing all the sugars and starch in the bamboo and reinforcing its inherent strengths.
New generation fused bamboo decking takes engineered bamboo to an even higher level.
The modified bamboo strands are then fused together using a very strong resin, the same kind used to make bowling balls. The resulting decking boards are extremely dense with durability levels beyond that of many hardwood timbers.
They are also far more stable than traditional timber decking and won’t shrink, warp, twist and are highly resistant to termites, fire, rot, etc
Giving a square edge to a round pole
One of the most dramatic differences between using natural bamboo poles and engineered bamboo is that the process of engineering the bamboo converts the profile of the material from a round to a square edge, opening up a myriad of new uses.
Bamboo products with a square profile can be used in so many different and creative ways in design and construction. It essentially changes the very nature of bamboo itself, further enhancing its strengths and overcoming one of its perceived weaknesses.
Effectively once bamboo has been laminated it can be machined like any timber product, giving you any type of bespoke square edge or angle design that you wish.
Additionally, by engineering bamboo, you remove the inconsistencies of bamboo poles as they grow naturally which have differences in everything from external pole diameter, pole length as well as the wall thickness of the pole, all of which can vary even from one end of a bamboo plant to the other.
By engineering the bamboo into a different format, you are able to standardise the thickness, weight, length, etc of the finished product which gives it greater consistency for building, construction, décor, fencing, screening, be that on a large scale or bespoke designs.
Engineered bamboo opens up so many possibilities you need to say to yourself at the start of any project, where timber would normally be the go-to option, “I should be doing this with bamboo”.
-Jennifer Snyders, BSc/Arch, NSW