Building Green: Exploring Bamboo as a Sustainable Construction Material

The preliminary literature review indicated that there was a lack of scientific or structural information regarding bamboo as a building material from an engineering or materials perspective, both globally as well as in South Africa. A large portion of the information was provided by architects, who promoted bamboo as a favourable alternative to timber or steel from a sustainability perspective. However, few scientific facts were published to corroborate these statements. Furthermore, due to the many different species of bamboo, and the vagaries of working with a natural material, i.e. not man-made, the qualitative information found regarding the material and engineering properties varied widely, and it was challenging to establish engineering design parameters. Furthermore, the information found relating to bamboo in South Africa focussed mainly on bamboo as a source for biofuel, and the growing of bamboo for such purposes