Housing NOW<\/a>, whereby they designed simple\u2014and surprisingly durable\u2014houses that could be built out of locally-abundant bamboo.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
And by first bending, then bundling them\u2014rather like creating a bent lamination–you can create supporting archways.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The design is modular and can be scaled up.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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 fa\u00e7ade. 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.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[147],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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