The field of research "Construction with Bamboo" is established at the Instiute for Structural Design of RWTH Aachen University since 1999. Since 2001 an academic training on this topic takes place lead by Dr.Ing. Evelin Rottke. The aim of our work is to promote the use of bamboo as a building material for ambitous buildings.First experiences in Building with Bamboo date from 1995 when there was a cooperation with Jörg Stamm who works on bamboo projects in Colombia and contacted our institute for a statics calculation for a bamboo bridge.Our work includes three main points:Website Our Website aims at gathering information on the topic "Construction with Bamboo" and at making it open to the public. The articles are written by students in context of the bamboo course.Nodal pointA further topic is the development of space frames in bamboo and especially the technical details. The traditional fixing techniques for bamboo buildings require notable craftsmanship. That is why we are looking for solutions which allow much prefabrication and which can be applied for spatial structures.Experimental BuildingsWe erect experimental buildings in order to test our developments in practice. The BambooDome was built in July 2004. It is based on the Diploma of our former student assistant Christoph Tönges. Students and Scouts from Aachen and Luxemburg took part in the assembly of the dome. The final assembly took only one day because of the extensive prefabrication.We offer more detailed information on our work in pdf file format:1-Bamboo as a Building Material2-State of the Art3-Bamboo at the Institute for Structural Design4-Development of the Beam Connection in Bamboo5-The BambooDomeIt is a fact that literature about bamboo in modern architecture is hard to find. At this time bamboo is just used as a forming and constructive element. Bamboo was introduced to Europe through some sporadic organizations and trial projects.  In regions where bamboo is domestic, it was not just integrated in culture, but even in architecture. The logical conclusion is that architects of these regions are more interested in presenting the qualities of this material to us.  Bamboo has the image of being the building material of the poorer class, for example in Colombia the upper class especially prefers concrete. In India the highest caste builds with stone, the middle castes use wood and only the lowest castes use bamboo. The material bamboo is not standardized so people in Europe are confronted with difficulties, if they want to build with bamboo.      joint by Renzo Piano picture Nevertheless some famous architects and engineers already made their experiments with this natural product. The qualities of bamboo are also appreciated by Renzo Piano. He was interested in combining light metal elements {tubes /slabs} with bamboo. In this way there arise intersections between bamboo- and modern light metal- constructions, Arata Isozaki, Buckminster Fuller und Frei Otto.
bambus.rwth-aachen.de/eng/reports/modern_architecture/referat.html