BIM Bamboo: a digital design framework for bamboo culms

For decades bamboo has been identified as one of the most promising alternatives to help reduce the rising demand for industrialised building materials in the global south but numerous technical, normative and cultural challenges have so far prevented its widespread use in construction. In response, significant resources are currently being invested in the development of standardised, highly processed structural bamboo components following the unsustainable model of mass industrialisation prevalent in the global north. As a counterpoint, this research re-examines the structural use of natural bamboo culms against the backdrop of the digital age and postulates a new design and fabrication framework to support the construction of high-quality, sustainable and resilient bamboo structures suitable for the twenty-first century. This framework is based on the principles of building information modelling and is focused on managing, as opposed to forcibly eliminating, the inherent variability of a natural structural element through modern three-dimensional scanning, digital modelling and robotic fabrication. This paper presents the conceptual details of this framework with a particular focus on Mexico, one of the largest emergent economies in the world, as a potential implementation platform.