Thailand Pavilion / BambuBuild

Curated by Hana Abdel

Text description provided by the architects. The building is located in Nansha Bird Park, a new type of ecological theme park, integrating water fowl breeding, science popularization, viewing and sightseeing. Nansha Bird Park has been the host of an International Colleges Design and Construction Competition and Forum for 21 years. The competition sets up different creative design themes, invites teachers and students in university from Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao Greater Bay Area and ASEAN to participate.

In 2019, the competition was also the 2nd Guangzhou Nansha Southeast Asia bamboo arts festival. The competition is designed to exercise the hands-on ability of students majored in bamboo architecture and construction. The original use of the building was main event center of this competion and forum, after that it is used as the exhibition center of Thailand cultural tourism and trading, China “The one belt and one road” nation bamboo expo.

Thailand Pavilion / BambuBuild - Interior Photography, Arch, Arcade — © Yang Zhao

The main building structure is made of moso bamboo, a popular bamboo in China. Bamboo is the most enviroment friendly building material and it is hollow tube, there is no material to tighten the bamboo in the middle of the cane. It is difficult to use tenon, mortise like wood material. Bolt and lashing joint take advantage of the strong outside fibres of this hollow tube.

Thailand Pavilion / BambuBuild - Interior Photography, Beam, Arch — © Yang Zhao

The building needs large space to contain many people but the maximum length of moso bamboo is 6.5m, the diameter is small, about 30mm to 60mm. We should optimize characteristics of bamboo to create unique, special construction design that only can be made of bamboo or effectively made with bamboo. Bundled bamboo poles are assembled into a structural frame with simple tool, low-skilled workers, stronger than bamboo used individually.

Thailand Pavilion / BambuBuild - Exterior Photography, Beam, Column — © Yang Zhao

In the context of park with a lot of greenery, water and animals, the construction of the building should be fast and doesn’t affect around. The structure is prefabricated before erection to achieve accuracy and easy to construct, make high speed construction…leading to design modular frame structure. Bamboo frames have about 12m span, the cantilever roof is about 3m to protect the building from rain and sunlight. Frame structures are arranged along the length of the building to define architectural space. The distance between 2 frame is about 2 m. The building is completely open architecture, connect to nature harmoniously.

The structure of the building is present in architectural design and also designing the architectural space and sometimes the architecture is born from spirit of structure. Bamboo architecture should be like that.