BBC Designed features IBUKU

Watch the whole video over on the BBC Designed channel.

“Bamboo as a timber has incredible strength. An engineer that I know compares it to carbon fibre because of the way that the long fibre result in strength as well as flexibility and that’s really important. The flexibility of bamboo is critical also because in earthquake-prone situations. The bamboo structure will kind of dance and bend long before it cracks under any pressure. The perception of bamboo in Asia over the past few hundred years up until today has been quite low. It’s considered a very humble and impermanent building material and that’s because it would be eaten by insects if not properly treated. Once you’ve treated it properly it’s protected from the rain and the UV of the sun.

Now that we can properly treat the bamboo we have the opportunity to really change that mindset and have people realize that you can take advantage of the strength and the flexibility and the incredibly efficient growth time. You can grow 18 meter long timber, within three years it will fully mature. There’s nothing that compares to that, it’s just incredibly smart and efficient material to use, let alone the fact that it’s beautiful.”