Bamboo is a useful plant we all know, but using Bamboo in construction, have you ever thought about it? Well, Neelakshi Mour and Abhinav did. The architect duo have been working with bamboo as a construction material for quite a while. It saves cost as well as the environment: A definite win win!
Neelakshi shares the start of this journey, the place where the thought found some firm ground to become a plan. “During 2014-16, I was doing my Masters in Architectural Design. There, I got a new perspective about this profession. I got to learn about the resources that we have in the North East India, especially bamboo, and how many people are working in the line. Abhinav was my senior and we quickly realised we were like-minded people. The idea was to come back home in Assam and explore the material, as a team, since most of our bamboo goes outside (of Assam). We wanted to try and make something out of this local resource. We are a team with a shared vision and we work towards that.”
Viewing Bamboo as a Strength
Usage of Bamboo in constructing buildings is a fairly new concept in India and convincing Indians about its ability is a challenge. When it comes to bamboo, cities like Guwahati treat it like an everyday item they see all the time with no special qualities whatsoever, apart from its culinary usage. With it being associated with the rural side of a region, an emerging metropolitan like Guwahati tries to distance itself from the plant altogether through its strong urban population.
“It is grown here so it is not appreciated much. Rural India and other hilly North Eastern states have a closer relationship with bamboo, starting from food to construction,” says the architect while explaining the reasons that makes pushing Bamboo as an option in the world of architecture a big struggle. Their clients have a hard time trusting it, but Neelakshi and Abhinav say “Maybe the whole house cannot be made of bamboo, but, we at least try to incorporate it somehow. There is a café coming up in Maniknagar, it is entirely made of steel and cement board. However, the gate and the false ceiling (gypsum board) is being replaced with bamboo. These are the small interventions we try to make to convince our clients.”
When we think of Bamboo, the first thing that comes to our mind is more often than not, a hut. The architects are trying to break that image and their work has certainly started a process of change in the acceptance of Bamboo as a building material. Especially by creating something which is visible to everyone, like the main gate of a house.
Neelakshi shares the idea, “A gate is going to be a part of the street people will walk on. The gate is interacting with the public, not with just the people inside the house. Even if 5 out of 100 people walk through the street and take notice of that gate and think ‘Hey, is that bamboo? Does that provide enough support?’ It is a favourable situation for us. Kids might come up and touch the gate and interact with it due to the presence of different details on it. For example, in a community library we worked on in Surat, Gujarat, has a main door made of bamboo. The detail was such that the bamboo can be rolled, so kids would come and play. This curiosity adds to the knowledge. Even if people pass a main gate with the curiosity that bamboo can be more than a hut, we win a small battle.”
Economy and Environment
The usage of bamboo in building various spaces has a positive financial impact too. Since there is still no initiative in building G+3 buildings in India as seen in Indonesia, the impact is seen on a very micro scale. “If we look at an office with partitions, they are usually plywood with sunmica on top, that would generally be the cheapest option. The material is cheap, the carpenters are readily available. If I convince you to replace it with bamboo, however, the cost would be lesser,” Neelakshi says. She mentions the cost that needs to be added for the comparison – from the materials to transport charges and labour. If only the material and labour charges are taken into consideration, bamboo can easily be shown as expensive, but when adhesives and heavy transport charges, along with all the miscellaneous expenses are added to other materials, bamboo is cheaper and sustainable. In addition, it only needs 3 steps to be ready: harvesting, treatment and fixing; and a craftsman gets your support at the same time!
Talking more about craftsmen, Neelakshi says “Bamboo artisans are also craftsmen but their tribe is decreasing fast. No one wants to buy bamboo or cane products, so they are losing livelihoods.”
The duo has worked in multiple projects outside of Assam too, like in Surat, Dehradun, Meghalaya and Nagaland; but they are mostly collaborative, when colleagues or friends need expertise in sustainable building. As of now, they wish to make themselves truly sustainable, both financially and in practice. There are still not many clientele who agree on using bamboo in their house construction. As a result, the duo also takes up conventional, mainstream projects like interior designing and permission drawing, etc. They expect to phase out of these “bread and butter projects” for a stable income and shift to bamboo totally, working more on its popularisation.
The role of Government
The widespread use of bamboo needs government support which is more forthcoming in recent times. Neelakshi shares, “In the past, bamboo was not even considered as a mainstream construction material. It was never included in the structural code books, but recently, in 2016 or 2017, the government released a whole new structural code for bamboo. This is a big step, although at the same time this is something only the fraternity knows about, it is not common knowledge. If it is marketed in a certain direction so that laymen get to know more about it, it will be a positive change.”
The duo explain that bamboo is as strong as steel when treated well and used in a certain way. IIT Guwahati and other Indian universities are doing a lot of experiments to try and make prototypes where they can replace steel with bamboo, just to reduce the consumption of steel. “The bigger the structures are getting these days, usage of pure steel is increasing a lot. If it becomes common knowledge that bamboo can be a construction material, it will be great,” Neelakshi reiterates.
Local sourcing
The transportation of materials is responsible for CO2 emissions to a great extent. Neelakshi and Abhinav elucidate, “We locally source our bamboo. We have a craftsman in our team, Kamleswar daa, and he sources all his materials from the city itself or the towns nearby. Other conventional materials like stone, marble, granite, plyboard, etc usually come from faraway places, so their carbon footprint is more.”
The architects are also keen on recycling. When refurbishing a house, clients may want to throw away the useless furniture, but the duo try to fix it as much as possible, even colouring them to give them a fresh look. “We analyse the furniture and do not get rid of it until it is a dire necessity. We try to fix them, like if there is some door that does not go with the décor, we can create a table out of it. We demolished few parts of a house some time ago, and we used the door frames for making the railing of the staircase. This way we surely have a lot more hard-work to do, especially the wood workers, but a lot of wood is saved and we believe it helps us for doing a greater good. We also used the windows for some tables and coloured the glass panes to use as décor.”
Neelakshi and Abhinav are very keen on rainwater filtration systems in the houses they construct, to save them from water scarcity, reducing the usage of freshwater for purposes other than drinking, and helping the environment. Building eco friendly habitats.
Read More: What’s cooking inside the bamboo tube?
