Bamboo is an amazing material. It is strong, it is flexible, and because it grows so fast, it is an environmentally friendly building material. Globally, it is usually applied as a surrogate for wood or steel, rather than in ways that utilise the material’s unique bending properties and strength. To promote low-carbon living and construction, as well as to fully utilise the flexibility of bamboo, a team consisting of students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and several other parties designed ZCB Bamboo Pavilion (Zero Carbon Building), the first large scale bent grid-shell.

The ZCB Bamboo Pavilion is a translucent public event space built in the summer of 2015 in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong. It is a four-storey-high bamboo grid shell structure with a footprint of approximately 350 square metre (3767 square feet) and a seating capacity of 200 people.

It is built from 473 large bamboo poles that are bent onsite to shape the structure. The poles are hand-tied together with metal wire using techniques based on Cantonese bamboo scaffolding craftsmanship. The shape is a large gritted shell structure that is folded down into three hollow columns. The lightweight structure rests on three circular concrete footings that function as ballast, preventing the pavilion from being picked up by the wind. A white glass fibre reinforced polymer fabric is tailor-made to fit the structure and is lit from inside the three legs at night.

The project investigates how computational design tools can be strategically inserted into existing traditional construction methods to allow for a more engaging and innovative architectural outcome. Hong Kong’s endangered craftsmanship of bamboo scaffolding construction is expanded through the introduction of digital form-finding and real-time physics simulation tools.

The design won the Small Project of the Year award at the World Architecture Festival in November.

Project credits:
Institute: The Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture
Principal investigator: Kristof Crolla
Co-investigator: Adam Fingrut
Research assistants: IP Tsz Man Vincent and Lau Kin Keung Jason
Structural engineering: Goman Ho and Alfred Fong
Bamboo consultant: Vinc Math
Authorised person: Martin Tam
Structural engineer: George Chung

Photos: Michael Law, Grandy Lui, and NG Ka Hang Kevin