Myanmar’s disastrous civil war has displaced well over 3 million people. And even before the 2021 coup, there was a housing crisis, with demand far outstripping supply; the military conflict has only intensified that problem.
Yangon-based architecture firm Blue Temple is part of the solution. They launched an initiative called Housing NOW, whereby they designed simple—and surprisingly durable—houses that could be built out of locally-abundant bamboo.
The build concept is pretty simple: Bamboo’s everywhere, but it’s pretty thin and bendy. Bundle a bunch of shoots together, though, and now you have a bunch of structural members that are both strong and flexible.
And by first bending, then bundling them—rather like creating a bent lamination–you can create supporting archways.
The design is modular and can be scaled up.
The firm came up with two ways to execute the houses: A pre-fab version that uses steel tubing for joists and can be trucked to the site in parts, and a non-pre-fab that can be built in the field by families themselves, using Ikea-like assembly manuals printed and distributed by Housing NOW.
The most expensive parts of the design are the corrugated metal roof panels, the steel binding strips and the concrete footers. Even still, “Each unit can be built in under a week for the price of a smartphone,” the firm writes. And with the DIY version, there is little labor cost; families do most of the construction, under the supervision of Housing NOW’s technical team members.
Here’s the incredible part: Earlier this year, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit Myanmar, leveling the city of Mandalay. Twenty-six of Housing NOW’s bamboo houses were 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) from the epicenter, and “every house remained absolutely intact,” the firm reports. “The geometric system distributes seismic loads [as well as allowing] variations in layout and façade. The earthquake became the ultimate proof of concept: in one of the most fragile contexts on earth, bamboo housing delivered resilience and dignity at scale.”
It takes about seven days to build one of the houses, and thus far they’ve built 79 of them. More are in the works: Housing NOW has distributed around 500 of the DIY build manuals nationwide. And as the map below shows, their design and model could be used in a lot of different parts of the world.