Adobe and Bamboo Research Institute

Happy New Year to everyone.

May this be the year of bamboo and mud. Our cantina is in its final stage. The trusses are complete. The structure is about 120 sq. meters in area. It uses locally harvested, locally treated and constructed using local labor. Its a nice example of our motto “think global, act local” It is built in a remote village called Harsar in the southern plains of Nepal. According to our calculation, the structure costs more than half compared to concrete and steel. Moreover, the structure has become pride of this impoverished but ambitious little village.

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The more we work with bamboo, more confident we become on the strength and beauty of this  vegetal steel. It  makes one wonder, why isn’t this material used more in the modern construction, as there is nothing it cant do that steel would. Yet, its cheaper, available, beautiful and yet many times more ecological. Here is one of our offices that is under construction. The cost of construction is about $200 per truss, the span is five meters and total area is about 40 sq. meter. Its a combination of earth (compressed earth blocks) and bamboo. The amount of cement used is is less than 10 percent.

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Here is the latest of our creation from Janakpur. Its part of a bigger structure which will be complete in only a few more weeks.  This is our first truss that is so huge. It uses combination of cement and steel for connection.

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Gate in many cultures symbolize invitation. Gates were (are) built on seas, mountains, rivers and streets to welcome the gods. In festivals seasons, Nepalis still build large structured gates, which almost look like bridges. Here is an example of a large bamboo temporary gate, built for the harvest season. Notwithstanding the cultural value, its an engineering feat in itself: connected with simple ropes and built without any foundation, they withstand heavy loads and fierce winds.  Moreover, these massive structures are built with no more than four people.

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It is sometimes strange how design can reinforce or dismantle hierarchy. We weaved a traditional khatiya in our recently built pavilion, and this has been a center of attraction in the whole village. People sit on it irrespective of their caste, class or gender distinction. In a village like harsar, which is still mired in traditional caste system, for everyone to sit on one bench is indeed an achievment. Had we put a normal “modern” chair the reaction would have been totally different; as chairs, interestingly enough, connotate hierarchy.

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The spring is here, and so is our work. Here is our studio in Janakpur. We will churning our more trusses this spring and winter. People interested in learning about (or with) please write to us.

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There are two kinds of stones- river bed stone and quary stones. Quary stones can be chiseled into any shape and sizes. It is a living tradition and there still are multi-story houses that are earthquake resistant which are built using this technique.

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The unevenness of bamboo can be compensated by using cob. Cob is mixture of cowdung, wheat husk and clay which are left to ferment for atleast 24 hours. Fermentation is known to produce lactic acid, (a polymer base) which also makes it . We have used cob with adobe which enables us to place bamboo vertically and/or horizontally without any problem in addition of having beautiful plastered surfaces.

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This is what the structure mentioned in the previous post looks like.

The legend tells that the old lichhavi king in order to impress the gods challenged himself to build a noble kind movable structure that no one has every dared! He inverted the traditional temple (which usually has shrines on the bottom) and rotated it on its axis. This structure is somewhat of a magnified version of a buddhist prayer wheel. It is also rotated only on a clock wise direction. The rotating wheel will spread the words of wisdom to all the places where the wind blows. The wheel is accompanied by music, and every neighborhood has a peculiar tune. In a particular intersection, no music is played and no wheel is rotated. The wheels and the music (which also can contain silence) are supposed to provoke certain mood and spirit which are different in every neighborhood.

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