{"id":328,"date":"2020-03-08T18:31:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T09:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/?p=328"},"modified":"2020-03-08T18:32:51","modified_gmt":"2020-03-08T09:32:51","slug":"bamboo-the-builder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/?p=328","title":{"rendered":"Bamboo, the builder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bamboo is one of the most sustainable and environment-friendly materials to build a structure with a negative carbon impact<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tony bamboo house installed near the open lawns at the\nIndia Habitat Centre in Delhi has been a centre of attraction for visitors\nsince mid-December. Installed on the sidelines of the annual GRIHA Summit, this\nis a 240-sq feet bamboo cottage for a \u2018cozy and comfortable living space\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cottage continues to be at the IHC long after the\nSummit in December 2019 prompting visitors to take photos of it or click\nselfies in front of it. A poster displays information about why it is there,\nand many people make effort to read it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), which had\ninstalled the aptly named \u2018Venu Kutir\u2019 (bamboo in Sanskrit is Venu) said, the\nidea to put that up was to highlight the fact that the use of steel, concrete,\naluminum and glass in construction ends up negatively impacting the atmosphere\nthrough the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) during its production as well as\nconstruction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, studies have established that bamboo emits\noxygen during its production and selected species of Indian bamboo sequesters\nup to 200 MT of carbon dioxide per hectare per year. Hence, bamboo is one of\nthe most sustainable and environmentally friendly materials to build a\nstructure with a negative carbon impact, and it can become the go-to material\nfor sustainability. Indeed, bamboo can be used to build durable and\ncontemporary structures that appeals to the aesthetic senses of the millennials\nand old generation alike. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost all states of the North-East India have a variety\nof bamboo houses, with unique designs for each of the ethnic groups, but in\nrest of India, the concept is not yet widely accepted. In recent years, an\nincreasing number of resorts are taking up the concept of bamboo\nhouses\/cottages. But there is yet no widespread use of bamboo in construction\nbusiness overall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, across India, timber and bamboo have been\nmost favoured building materials. But thanks to skewed policies such as bamboo\nput under \u2018tree\u2019 category and blindly aping of the western designs, the use of\ncement\/RCC in buildings has gone up exponentially. Then, a major policy change\nhappened in December 2017 when the Centre pulled out bamboo from the \u2018tree\u2019\ncategory back to it being a \u2018grass\u2019. This eased the restrictions on its\ncommercial growing and cutting. Things are changing but only slowly and it may\nbe another five years, when more and more people grow bamboo and the real\nimpact will be seen on ground once the business eco-system involving bamboo is\nstabilized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to bamboo and timber housing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once, each of the regions had a unique architecture to showcase, entirely based on locally available resources. A Himachali house will have slate stone roof and timber below it for support, Konkan coastal area house will necessarily have a sloping red tiled (kavelu) roof, a typical Madhya Pradesh rural area house will have a mud-floor\/mud-wall house polished with cow-dung paste, or a traditional house in Arunachal Pradesh have bamboo as a major player with wooden logs for stilts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"

Timber and slates are used in conventional Himachal houses (Pic from The Tribune) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Travel to any city across India, all of them have started\nto look the same. Hideous RCC buildings, similar high-rises with no or very\nless aesthetics, stone tiles adorning the floors and at times wall, and, in\nrecent decades, glass fa\u00e7ades. The virus is spreading to the rural areas too as\nliving in a pucca makan (a cement concrete house) is aspirational. The latest\ngovernment announcement of ensuring a pakka makan to all also points towards\nbrick and cement mortar buildings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little that the policy makers and common people realise\nthat most of the building materials that is used today has embodied energy, it\ncauses environmental damage (loss of forests due to mining included), there is\na transportation cost as it needs to be ferried from long distances. \u201cAny of\nthe materials we use \u2013 steel, cement, aluminum, anything leaves a trail of\nenvironmental destruction. How long can we continue inflicting environmental\ndamage? There is soon going to be a crisis for whole of the building industry,\nespecially in view of the impact due to looming climate change,\u201d says Prof K T\nRavindran, architect, town planner and former head of Delhi Urban Arts\nCommission (DUAC).   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ravindran himself has been extensively using timber in\nvarious forms in his projects. And no, he does not advocate cutting primary\nforest for timber. Instead, there is ample scope for using secondary timber. It\ngrows rapidly and there are variety of options available. He also advocates use\nof bamboo that grows rampantly all over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bamboo is a highly underutilized produce. It regenerates\nitself and for commercial plantation too, it grows very fast. Bamboo can be a\ngame changer if wisely deployed in building both \u2013 high end houses using\nchemical processed bamboos and low-cost affordable houses for housing for all.\nIt will not just help bamboo growers multiply incomes but also prevent a hue\ndamage to Mother Earth.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delhi-headquartered non-profit Indian National Trust for\nArts and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) has initiated a project documenting the\nvernacular building forms, local construction materials and techniques. As\nstate wise inventory piles up, most common traditional materials surface as\ntimber and bamboo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the problem is bamboo for houses is not yet used\nwidespread. Except for north-eastern states, most applications include resorts,\nsome fancy banquet halls, farmhouse or even some temporary exhibition area. \u201cIt\nis only now that the Indian construction companies are waking up to replacing\nmany things with bamboo. There are bamboo boards, flooring, plyboards,\nfurniture, you name it. Everything made of bamboo in the market for quite some\ntime. But in absence of any incentives, production never really has scaled up.\nThere needs to be a demand so that with volumes, prices can come down too,\u201d\nobserves Sandeep Theng of the Indian Federation of Green Energy (IFGE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Skeptics question the use of timber and bamboo for high-rises\nsaying bamboo or timber can be good only for single or double story-houses. How\ncan it replace the booming high-rise building business? \u201cPeople are highly\nunaware that bamboo\u2019s tensile strength is far more than steel. It can very well\nbe used in high-rise buildings,\u201d Theng says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ravindran points out, \u201cIt has also something to do with\nquantum of buildings. High rises are unsustainable. They are expensive not only\nfrom monetary perspective but also from environmental perspective.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even if not high rises, to start with timber and\nbamboo buildings can be used to construct public utility buildings and\ngovernment departments in cities. Bus stops, car sheds, bill payment kiosks,\neducational institutions, community buildings and many other buildings that are\nnot high rises can easily be built using timber and bamboo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere should be a policy of incentivizing usage of bamboo\nin any type of building construction and by every ministry,\u201d Theng\nsuggests.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bamboo and timber to fight climate change<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The International Bamboo and Rattan Organisation (INBAR)\nlists benefits of bamboo for a wide range of livelihood applications as other\nforest resources become increasingly strained under climate change, as the\nimperative to mitigate climate change enforces less dependence on fossil fuels\nand endangered forest resources, and as research discovers new applications.\nBamboo itself and many durable products made from bamboo can be potentially\ncarbon-negative, because they act as locked-in carbon sinks in themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Bamboo from Mishmi Hills, Arunachal Pradesh (Pic by Nivedita Khandekar) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With high unemployment rates, ongoing agrarian crisis, bamboo helps farmers adapt to adverse circumstances due to changing climate. Bamboo and its products can provide a year-round livelihood.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in \u2018Scientific Reports\u2019, a recent study by\nresearchers at Cambridge University (UK) and University of Natural Resources\nand Life Sciences in Vienna (Austria) that examined bamboo\u2019s thermal\nconductivity, showed that \u201cthe amount of heating and cooling required in\nbuildings is fundamentally related to the properties of the material they are\nmade from, particularly how much heat the materials used can conduct and store.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bamboo use can dramatically reduce emissions compared to\ntraditional materials, helping to mitigate the human impact of climate change,\nClimate News Network reported quoting Darshil Shah of the Department of Architecture\nat Cambridge, who led the study. \u201cPeople may worry about the fire safety of\nbamboo buildings. To address this properly we have to understand the thermal\nproperties of the building material. Through our work we can see that heat\ntravels along the structure-supporting thick cell wall fibres in bamboo, so if exposed\nto the heat of a fire the bamboo might soften more quickly in the direction of\nthose fibres. This helps us work out how to reinforce the building\nappropriately.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier last week, a statement from the Potsdam Institute\nfor Climate Impact Research advocated that buildings can become a global CO2\nsink if made out of wood instead of cement and steel. A material revolution\nreplacing cement and steel in urban construction by wood can have double\nbenefits for climate stabilization, it says. First, it can avoid greenhouse gas\nemissions from cement and steel production. Second, it can turn buildings into\na carbon sink as they store the CO2 taken up from the air by trees that are\nharvested and used as engineered timber. \u201cHowever, while the required amount of\ntimber harvest is available in theory, such an upscaling would clearly need\nmost careful, sustainable forest management and governance,\u201d the experts\nwarned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is where the government policies in propagating commercial secondary timber and wide bamboo plantations can help play a major role.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(This story first appeared in ‘Spectrum’ of The Tribune on February 9, 2020 and can be read here<\/a>) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bamboo is one of the most sustainable and environment-friendly materials to build a structure with a negative carbon impact A tony bamboo house installed near the open lawns at the … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environmental-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}