Cempedak is an island hotel built in Indonesia entirely of bamboo, recycled teak and rubber wood and topped with grass-thatched roofs. There are no walls, not even in the second-floor bedroom and shower, in order to catch the sea breezes and be lulled to sleep by the lapping sea.
The architects converted the conceptual drawings into bamboo models that were used onsite to build the structures with no paper floor plans.
The Dodo Bar was built from black bamboo and black palm fiber and resembles a witch’s hat.
By 2017, 11 villas had been completed together with the restaurant, boathouse and bar. At the peak of construction, around 200 people were employed on site.
In building Cempedak, 10 different species of bamboo were used. The resort has its own bamboo garden that shows how the various grasses grow. The primary species of bamboo used for the uprights is locally known as Petung and these have a diameter of around 20cm (8 inches) and with greater tensile strength than steel.
Bamboo is a grass and one of its key benefits is that you do not kill the plant when you cut it down; it simply sends up a new shoot that can growwithup to nearly 1m in a day. The large bamboo pieces used in this project were at least four years old at the time and around 14m long.
Bamboo likes to have an ‘umbrella’ to keep the rain off and boots to keep its feet off the ground, so the uprights are typically supported on stone footings.
There are a number of insects who like to eat bamboo, and the best treatment for bamboo is to soak the bamboo in a solution of borax, a naturally occurring mineral that is not dangerous for humans.
One of the things that makes bamboo unique is the curved shapes that can be created. To form these shapes, bamboo is split and then rebound together to form long lengths that are then reformed and tied to the uprights to get the wonderful curves. The ridge line on these villas is formed with a single piece of this measuring 43m (47 yards) and weighing approximately 500 kg (1102 lbs).
The flooring is a split bamboo 5cm (2 inches) wide, nestled together, then pressed and pinned with long bamboo pegs. These are then secured to the flooring members using bamboo pegs.
Recycled rubber wood was used for any outdoor flooring or decking. This material if made from veneer taken from rubber trees that have passed their useful life.
You can watch a video about this at www.youtube.com
You can read the original article at woodcentral.com.au