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Sanjana Aggarwal
3.5 mins read
June 23
Sustainable, easily available, quick-to-grow, aesthetic and organic. No wonder bamboo is getting a comeback among designers beyond its south-eastern origins!
Bamboo is one of the most diverse design materials today. It can be used to create anything from a lampshade to a house, and it does both jobs incredibly well!
If you are curious about how designers around the world are capitalizing on its strengths as a material, check out these 5 designers who are working wonders with bamboo.
Sangaru’s collection ‘Truss Me’ brings bamboo furniture into a contemporary light, highlighting the utility and charm of bamboo even in the 21st century.
An industrial designer, Sandeep started to discover the potential of bamboo when he was teaching technical drawing to craftspeople in Tripura. Bamboo is part of the lifestyle in this North-Eastern state where everyone uses it in some shape or form.
This opened his mind to the world of possibilities offered by bamboo, and he started using the material to create a wide range of furniture and interior pieces. In his Bengaluru workshop, you can see different types of bamboo lying around, just waiting to be experimented with! His first collection of bamboo furniture won the 2009 Red Dot Design Award. He says he called it ‘Truss-Me‘, since nobody really trusted bamboo as a material!
This makes us wonder if sustainable building material specilization is the next big thing in design?
Through the design of the Spa at Permata Ayung Estate, IBUKU uses bamboo to create luxurious spaces, redefining its perception as a primarily rural material
A Canadian designer, Elora Hardy founded IBUKU to discover the potential of sustainable materials in creating beautiful spaces. IBUKU uses bamboo as a core material in all its projects. The team has built more than 40 sustainable building designs made of bamboo in Bali. And they continue to push the boundaries of how this modest material is perceived around the world!
Shi’s collection, Dematerialize/Rematerialize seeks to explore the interaction between the user and the object. The Screen Chair series imitates a bamboo forest, creating alternating lights and shadows
Originally a jewellery designer, Shi believes in the importance of respecting nature and being humble in order to create good designs. He started using bamboo because he wanted to work with something unique to China, a material or craft that did not exist in the west! He then designed bamboo furniture by combining ancient crafts with contemporary needs.
The studio’s invention, the Zome Building Kit, brings the joy of building with bamboo to everyone by creating a DIY kit for building bamboo structures within your backyard!
Driven by the passion for sustainable design, the Australian studio builds garden structures, installations, bridges and more using bamboo! Giant Grass is known for its 'Zome Building Kit,' a DIY kit that allows you to build small structures like gazebos, meditation pods, tents, or just about anything you want using bamboo!
Martian S.O.L- Seed of Life, a project that envisions a bamboo colony on Mars
Taking it one step further than the rest of the designers, Zaki and Amzar have proposed a project that uses bamboo as an alternative to traditional construction materials- on Mars! They believe bamboo is an ideal material to build shelter on Mars because it is light enough to be transported and can even be grown there eventually. For them, it is an ideal material for laying the foundation for sustainable building design in new settlements!
As designer Jair Straschnow rightly says, 'Bamboo is kosher. It's green, 100%, and that's a good starting point.'
There's a lot more designers and architects can achieve with bamboo in the future. But we believe that a growing recognition of its advantages as a material is a great starting point!
Want to know more about sustainable building materials, architecture and design? Head straight to Novatr's Resources!
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