UK-grown bamboo
Antepavilion 2021 - The Sellout
More coming soon 
Bamboo is widely used as a construction material across the tropics in Asia and South America. It grows quickly, is stronger than timber and can be used almost entirely, without the offcuts and processing waste that release C02 back in to the atmosphere as they decompose. Bamboo is an ideal carbon sink - the plant stores C02 as it grows, is cut down, and used in its entirety, with the C02 captured.

Bamboo can grow to diameter sizes of up to 150mm in ideal conditions. In the UK, bamboo reaches diameters of around 50mm. As a consequence of Climate Change, conditions in parts of southern Europe are enabling larger diameter bamboo to be grown.

Bamboo is strong, it requires little to no processing to be used, and is becoming more readily available in Europe - it has great potential to be used as a structural material.

Public House have been exploring bamboo as a structural material for several years now. Although small diameter bamboo does not lend itself to use for permanent well-insulated northern European spaces, we have been exploring temporary, modular installations, pavilions and even furniture.

We hope that by experimenting with novel use cases for UK-grown bamboo, we can start to apply this  structural material more widely.

Areas of focus so far have been:
    - Modular, demountable systems, focussing on simple connection details, whether drilled/pinned or tied
    - Bundled bamboo structures for higher load applications
    - Shell structures formed from geometric patterns of full-length bamboo pieces, limiting the cutting and reducing stress concentrations at individual connection nodes

We aim to continue our research by building full-scale test structures such as pavilions and stages for festivals, and art installations.