“19 architect students, 5 weeks in Southern Africa, a school building in 12 days
Students from the Bergen School of Architecture in Norway have built a school building in a Mozambique village using sand bags, bottles and grass. The building consists of an enclosed room for computers and a more flexible space with grass doors for English lessons, divided by a large sliding door. A reinforced-concrete frame was filled in with sand bags and glass bottles were embedded in one wall.”
“At Chiangmai Life Construction we build to increase the quality of life. We build from natural materials: earth, bamboo, wood. When building with earth and bamboo you get closer to nature in many ways. It is essential to understand the interaction of these materials with the elements.
“The International Federations community-based early-recovery programme has supported tens of thousands of quake survivors to take control of their own recovery. With support from trained Red Cross volunteers and students from local universities, affected communities have managed and implemented the construction of more than 14,000 quake-resilient transitional shelters.
Bamboo is one of the most sustainable building materials on the planet, and so I’d like to post a few pics of nice bamboo interiors and bamboo furniture. Bamboo is rapidly renewable, captures carbon, filters and oxygenates the air, reduces flooding and provides habitat for wildlife. Bamboo is used in thousands of useful products from furniture to cutlery to houses. There’s endless variety to choose from. These are just a few examples I found from searching the Internet.
Simon Velez’s bamboo ecolodge design in China is truly stunning. I think combining bamboo with earthen construction such as earthbags is one of the most sustainable of all building methods. “Crosswaters Ecolodge, Guangdong Province, S. China. Hitesh was the Planning and Design team leader that planned, designed and supervised the construction of the first ecolodge … Read more
Here’s some information that might prove inspirational if you’re incorporating bamboo into your earthbag design. Deep within the jungles of Bali, a school made entirely of bamboo seeks to train the next generations of leaders in sustainability. In a swath of jungle near Ubud, Bali, the Green School has just finished the second year of … Read more