ENERGY EFFICIENT BAMBOO HOUSE
Location: Baoxi Xiang
Zhenjiang Province
Architect: Mauricio Cardenas Laverde
Founder of Studio Cardenas Conscious Design
The project deals with the opportunity to design an Energy Efficient Bamboo House Baoxi Xiang for LIB - Longquan International Bamboo Biennale organized by Mr.GE Qiantao Artspring from Shanghai, in the context of the new policies for sustainable growth of China.
Studio Cardenas Conscious Design explores the potentiality to minimize carbon emissions, protection and natural ecological development through a sustainable construction process using the natural elements available in the area, such as natural light, underground water, bamboo, natural ventilation and rammed earth to achieve a high standard innovative ecological house for the Chinese contemporary context.
Bamboo is a deep part of Chinese culture, it is beautiful and a strategical natural-based solution for the mitigation of climate change as it absorbs the most carbon dioxide during its life cycle; it is ready to be used for construction and grows much faster than any tree species. Therefore, to use bamboo in our design is very strategical, but to achieve a sustainable architecture it is important that the construction process is sustainable too. For this reason, our design strategy was as follows:
- to design innovative dry-mounted connections not to weaken bamboo through perforation nor fill it in with concrete, and allow the replacement of bamboo poles if needed;
- to design and easy to assemble construction system in order that local workers can do the construction;
- to combining bamboo (vegetable steel) and steel to create an industrialized contemporary construction system for natural bamboo;
- to apply a precise geometry (Golden proportion) to achieve standardization of the pieces, best quality control and harmonic visual impact.
The architect, who has been working for more than 20 years, is an award-winning bamboo expert and a global environmental protection designer. The Energy Efficient Bamboo House was recently ranked one of the 100 most influential projects in Asia.