Super-strong stalks: building with bamboo

Anyone who has ever had bamboo in the garden (whether desired or not) knows that it is a very strong plant that also grows very fast. This makes it a good raw material for bio-based building materials including floorboards, interior walls and wall panels. At BouwBeurs 2025 there will be plenty of attention for it.

In many parts of the world, bamboo in its raw form is a popular building material. Especially in Asia and South America, people use thick bamboo poles in constructive ways; they form the framework of houses.

Closer to home, demand is growing for bamboo for use in construction, but as a component of biobased materials. In June 2024, the first Dutch symposium on building with bamboo was held in Rotterdam. Topics included the manufacture of panel materials from bamboo and the use of bamboo in composite materials. 

Steel and concrete

Bamboo has many advantages. It has a tensile strength similar to steel and a pushing force similar to concrete. It is also light, flexible, and can be processed in multiple ways.

Bamboo is a grass and grows mainly in South America, Asia and Africa. In China it is produced on a large scale, and it is also increasingly grown in southern Europe. Even in our own country bamboo is grown here and there. There are quite a few different varieties, each with its own specific characteristics. The largest bamboo species is the giant bamboo. It grows to a height of 35 meters and its stems are about 30 centimeters thick. So bamboo is a plant, but it has the properties of hardwood. Strong but also very dimensionally stable because it hardly expands and contracts. Bamboo grows much faster than trees planted as hardwoods. Old, thick stems are harvested so that young shoots have room to grow. Some bamboo species grow as much as a meter a day. So the growth rate is enormous.

From stem to shelf

Bamboo poles can be used unprocessed as a building material. Several processes are required to manufacture boards, slats or beams. It starts with cutting and drying. After that, anything is possible: bamboo can be bent, split, pressed, you name it. Then it can be processed into various end products such as facade panels, sheet material for floors and walls, and as a construction material in the form of planks, beams, frames, and shelves. This makes bamboo eminently applicable as a sustainable alternative to tropical hardwood.

Hallmark

There are several labels for bamboo products. The international certification system FSC stands for sustainable forest management. It applies to wood, of course, but it also includes other products that come from a forest. Think of rubber, charcoal, paper, but also bamboo. Bamboo today also has its own FSC certification and that is the BFSC label: Bamboo Forest Stewardship Council. That seal indicates that bamboo products come from sustainably managed bamboo plantations. Then there is the international PEFC label (Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes). Wood and forest products (including bamboo) with this label come from sustainably managed forests.

At BouwBeurs 2025

There will be plenty of attention to biobased building materials at the BouwBeurs taking place from February 3 to 7 at the Jaarbeurs Utrecht. Stop by, and visit, for example, Awood in hall 8, booth D008. They produce sustainable planks of thermally modified bamboo for installation on terraces, facades, walls, ceilings and roofs.