One often connects with bamboo people during our travels and with John I met at the Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival 2019. We did not communicate much after that but I kept an eye out on his bamboo related work with the AA School. John graciously agreed to be featured on the blog and here he is - some much of what John has to say will reverberate with many of us and he says it with a relevant and informed point of view.

John Osmond Naylor. AA Dipl, RIBA, CNIAH

John Naylor is researcher at Newcastle University, visiting school course lead at the Architectural Association and an architect at Grimshaw Architects in London. He completed his AA Diploma at the Architectural Association in 2013, winning the Holloway Prize, the Fosters Prize for Sustainable Infrastructure. John has worked at MAD, Beijing, rare Architects in Paris, and the Singapore University of Technology and Design, on projects in the UK, Singapore, Malaysia, China and Haiti.

He continues to lead the AA School’s bamboo research visiting programme which attempts to reduce the gap between digital design tools and materials with natural variability such as bamboo, applied to real world geopolitical contexts as a catalyst for sustainable development.

These have taken place in Haiti, Myanmar and now at the Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) in Bandung. John’s ongoing research based in Haiti, looks at how through architectural design education, the next generation of designers can advocate and advance full-culm bamboo in tropical low- and middle-income countries (LMIC’s) as a material to provide adequate and sustainable urban housing and encourage ecological regeneration.

1. Tell us about yourself and how you got into bamboo?

I am originally from South Shields, on the north east coast of England. I studied in London at the Architectural Association and just before my final year back at the AA, in 2012, I attended a lecture by Article 25 and viewed a TED talk by Peter Haas. Both of these changed my thinking about the power of design to create a resilient built environment and both were specifically focussed on Haiti.

It was pretty stark that the catastrophic effects of the 2010 Port au Prince earthquake was a result of a lack of adequate building materials arguably as a result of deforestation. My AA Diploma project looked at how we could use more timber in Haitian construction. In Haiti at the end of 2012 I visited the Wynne Farm Ecological Reserve in Kenscoff, to the south of Port au Prince. 

Here my mind was converted from perceiving bamboo as an alternative, temporary material, to understanding bamboo as a strong latent fast growing construction material. This is thanks to bamboo’s speedy maturation process. Bamboo can reach economic maturity in years as opposed to decades for pine. In order to kick-start demand for bamboo from the construction industry, the project posited that the next generation of architects in Haiti should be taught to design for bamboo.

This can change the perception of bamboo in the minds of clients and start to create a local demand for bamboo to produce lightweight earthquake resistant buildings designed locally, generating a catalyst for reforestation. 

I was very lucky to be given the Foster’s Prize for this project and receive great support from the AA to continue this thesis. This allowed me to go back to Haiti in the summer of 2013 and work with Jane Wynne and bamboo designer Franck Vendryes to formulate these courses and build a team of architects and educators. This team was made up of myself, Diego Perez Espitia, Rose Di Sarno, Aditya Aachi, Doria Reyes Córdova, and Nancy Leconte. 

These two week long annual AA workshops ran until 2017 with the goal of developing bamboo in the Haitian construction industry through architectural education and the use of digital tools as well as physical bamboo construction. 

We concluded the workshops in Haiti after five workshops. I currently lead the AA’s bamboo visiting school programme with Andry Widyowijatnoko and the next course is anticipated to be at the Institut Teknologi Bandung in August 2021. 

As for the long term goals for the work in Haiti, this has continued as the basis of my current PhD research.

2. There are still not many bamboo educators around - tell us about your work and how it has helped in developing the bamboo world.

I think it will take time to see the fruits of this. We have only recently felt confident to start the evaluation process of the courses in Haiti. We will first need to see past participants on our courses move into practice and see how they are able to be activists for bamboo and find opportunities to use the material. Through an initial evaluation on the first five courses in Haiti, there are arguable encouraging signs including a positive consensus on the future role of bamboo in Haitian construction and individuals from the course actively establishing bamboo reforestation activities. 

For my own research, the bamboo world is pretty much tropical Low- and middle-income countries (LMIC’s). These are the countries where you’ll find Guadua angustifolias, Dendrocalamus asper, Gigantochloa apus’. Blessed with the big and strong tropical woody bamboos, these countries can have a fantastic opportunity to avoid the impact on the environment that Europe, China and the USA have had through their ‘development’.

Tropical LMIC’s are the countries which share characteristics. They suffer: a legacy of colonialism; significant deforestation; they are the parts of the world with the greatest lack of urban adequate housing yet the fastest rates of urbanisation, and the tropics is predicted to be home to half of the world population in the next three decades.

The materials we choose in order to build the new workplaces, homes and schools of these increasing urban populations will be critical in how we address climate change and it is the next generation of architects who will be instrumental in that choice. 

The importance of design education to change the built environment in tropical LMIC’s cannot be overstated. Education can enfranchise the next generation of architects to design and innovate with sustainable materials such as bamboo, in a fashion that can gain traction in the local built environment and have a local identity. In our courses there are five main aspects to the curriculum:

·      Bamboo material knowledge: Teaching how to practically build with bamboo, the characteristics of bamboo as a plant and as a pole, joinery, and most importantly the concept of protection by design as fundamental to the design process, and not as an afterthought, since bamboo has low natural durability.

·      Ecology: Observing the design output as more than a building but as a driver for wider positive ecological regeneration.

·      Software: Teaching computational design tools as tools for the design process and allowing students to autonomously discover their relevance and application. These tools and processes can ultimately reduce the time and resource in achieving optimal design solutions.

·      Networking: A chance for those interested in bamboo to come together throughout the course, share ideas and take away contacts and a network after the course.

·      Participatory design: Though engagement with stakeholders and both local and global issues this is designed to redefine the role of the designer in the context where we are working and lay the groundwork for future innovation. 

3. It would be really useful for us to know more about designing in bamboo with both physical and also digital modelling.

We start with model making using bamboo skewers and students have access to bamboo culms of different species. This shows variety and the challenges of designing for a material with natural variability. Immediately this allows the material to inform the design. How it bends, when it snaps…. This should be fundamental in the design process. 

From these models we move to Rhinoceros 3D (Rhino) which is a three-dimensional computer-aided design software, and Grasshopper which is a graphical algorithm editor integrated within Rhino. Grasshopper is used to build generative algorithms which produce geometry in Rhino. 

As we change input parameters such as pole diameters, or site orientation in the script we observe the spatial impact of these in real time. Grasshopper offers a range of plug ins which can apply forces or run environmental analysis.

Since bamboo cannot be exposed to UV light a plug in such as Ladybug, for example, gives us the ability to input solar information into our algorithm to ensure that the bamboo structure will always be protected with the minimum material required for a roof. At this point the computer models can be interrogated with the students to detail the joinery. 

On our last AA course this past summer, Andry Widyowijatnoko was unable to travel to London and so this examination of the design with the students was conducted via Zoom. How poles would overlap, joint types and bolt locations can then be considered in the algorithm. We then have a buildable design which can instantly adapt to a change of input parameters.

We can also output information such as cut lengths of bamboo poles and highlight required node positions. Such efficiencies in the design process can save time and reduce the cost of design and innovation.

4. I am very much pro- physical bamboo modelling especially at the earlier design stages of a project - what are the main challenges with digital bamboo modelling, if any?

I feel the architectural design process which has become mainstream in practice and education around the world has to some extent lost the consideration of material. In general, our current design processes along with the tool of 3D modelling software lack gravity, lack understanding scale, and lack material characteristics. 

When using a pen or a mouse it is hard to get a feel for the material, or spelks in your fingers. Phrases like ‘massing studies’, ‘optioneering’ often are comprised of using blue foam blocks or white extruded Polysurfaces in 3D software, each intended to represent building mass in order to study a built volume and impact on a site. 

However this does not consider what parts of the façade would be exposed to sun and rain. Or, which column configuration could be constructed if we were to use timber instead of concrete?

Often once an ‘option’ is selected we are stuck with a design which can only be achieved through robust industrial materials such as steel, concrete and a man-made cladding material. Timber and bamboo are not adequate in this scenario. 

This is not the fault of the software, it is the fault of how we use it. The software is just a tool. As is physical modelling, as is 1:1 prototyping. This is neither a fault of timber or bamboo, but the fault of the designer devising a scheme in which these materials are inappropriate. At worst sustainability becomes an afterthought and timber or bamboo is then specified in a completely inappropriate manner. 

Our main challenge on these courses for the long term is to augment the design process with greater awareness of the materials and to show how the consideration of material can be built into the initial design stages of a project. 

Generative design tools with environmental analysis and live physics plug ins can assist us in this direction. An additional challenge to this is, how can we then use software with its great accuracies for a material such as bamboo which has natural variability? 

This challenge was best articulated in Diminishing Difficulty by Willis and Woodward in 2005. Some design parameters such as material flaws, grain directions and inconsistent densities will be difficult to anticipate in modelling software. However, by applying these tools into the design process of the AA workshops, we endeavour to produce research which can bridge this gap and innovate.

5. Apart from teaching and facilitating, do you design and build in bamboo too?
Currently I don’t. I enjoyed greatly overseeing the construction of the bamboo core house in Haiti in 2016/2017 and love that tactile experience of working with bamboo. I also enjoy visiting bamboo construction sites and talking to engineers and architects who work with bamboo.

I think it’s important to have this exposure and understanding of how to build. For now, my interest and research is focussed on how to create a model of design education which can teach bamboo design and construction in a way to advocate for the material. For me this is the most interesting. 

6. What are the main challenges in bamboo building design and how are you approaching these challenges?

Bamboo is an incredible material when it is used appropriately. It is important to state that my interest is specifically in full-culm bamboo. This un-engineered more sustainable form of bamboo has the greater barriers to overcome than engineered bamboo, but can potentially have more impact especially on the family or village scale. 

Full-culm bamboo has natural variability which makes it difficult to design for. It has low natural durability, and there is a lack of knowledge about the material performance which then creates a vacuum occupied by exaggerated blanket statements such as, ‘bamboo is stronger than steel’. 

Such overpromises of bamboo’s performance can also exacerbate the unfounded societal prejudice of bamboo as a ‘poor man’s timber’ which is a consequence of inappropriate use as well as a legacy of colonialism. These are challenges we need to overcome but architects can definitely change societal stigmas if they can produce designs which are appropriate for bamboo, are functional, and are beautiful. 

Though, I’d rather dwell on the opportunities instead of challenges. Yes, these challenges faced by full-culm bamboo are great, but they are much simpler challenges to solve than global biodiversity loss, climate change, lack of adequate housing, deforestation, and increased frequency and magnitude of natural disasters. Bamboo has a role to play in mitigating all of these. 

7. What is your favourite all time bamboo building and why?

 That’s a hard one to answer. I have been very lucky to see many inspirational buildings which use full-culm bamboo throughout South East Asia and the Americas, so choosing a favourite is difficult. There are however two projects that have been on my list for a while that I’m very interested to see. These are the Base Bahay projects in the Philippines, and the ZERI Pavilion by Simón Vélez in Manizales. 

8. What makes your work different and unique and how do you see yourself and your bamboo work, moving forward?

I see bamboo in architectural education as one which is neglected and where we need to start producing more disciplined and unified ways of teaching bamboo including the history of bamboo in architecture. We still use terms like ‘bamboo architecture’, but really it should just be ‘architecture’ in the same way we don’t use terms like ‘steel architecture’.

There are some great people working to transfer knowledge in this field across the globe who I have been fortunate to teach alongside and learn from including Jorg Stamm and Andry Widyowijatnoko. I think we will get to a point where bamboo is not ‘alternative’ or an outlier but one of a palette of mainstream materials like steel, timber or concrete. 

8. What would be your advice to those who are enthusiastic and want to make a start in bamboo?

 For any budding designer, I would say that the first thing would be to remember that bamboo should be kept out of the sun and the rain. Call it ‘protection by design’, or call it ‘wearing big boots and a big hat’. This is just fundamental. Any form should respond to these and embed these seamlessly. 

A search for bamboo buildings on any design blog today will still pull up renders or photos of designs with bamboo which will rot and decay in roughly five years. Bamboo is still a relatively unknown material that we are now re-discovering and learning more about every day.

I think we are living through a time with bamboo similar to when concrete was rediscovered two centuries ago and at that time we even saw experimentation with concrete boats!

Bamboo is a great material, but it is not a super material, it can rot and decay without treatment or appropriate use. It is very important to design for the material, not just design and then add the material later. It is the inappropriate and impractical application of bamboo in buildings which will do the most harm to bamboo’s reputation at a time when we need to be exemplifying it’s incredible positives. 

Arguably it is the case today is that if a concrete building collapses we blame the designer or engineer, and if a bamboo building collapses we blame bamboo. With this in mind any designer for bamboo will understand that bamboo is on trial constantly in the court of public opinion and

if we can convince public opinion to inhabit a bamboo built environment, then we have an opportunity to alleviate many of the global challenges and create a better sustainable future.

Personal email:  J.naylor73@newcastle.ac.uk

AA Visiting School email:  bamboolab@aaschool.ac.uk

Research gate profile:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Naylor5

 Instagram: @aavsbamboo