Re connecting bamboo

Abstract

Today, the world is continuously looking forward towards sustainable solutions for building construction, thus the interest and the need for sustainability is continuously growing. With growing issues related to the environment and sustainability, Bamboo being one of the answers is one such sustainable material that has a lot of potentials to be used as a building material. This graduation research is a little step towards uplifting the material, improvising and changing the current perception of bamboo in the building construction sector by evaluating possibilities of using an engineered form of bamboo in a structural application. Today, bamboo is developed up to a level where it is structurally modified for improved strength, durability and performance. This research focuses on using this advanced form of Bamboo to develop a method of construction to build a housing prototype and investigate into connection techniques to construct the same using these materials. The connection design is inspired by Japanese interlocking joinery, with an aim to avoid the use of external fasteners to connect the joinery. This semi-permanent prefabricated interlocking approach allows for future flexibility. The research also establishes and evaluates criteria as a design rule for efficient joinery connections. The joinery design is validated by physical prototyping, testing and software validation of the proposed joinery design configuration. The project strives to gain validation for the potential of using bamboo is a structural application.