Mention bamboo and what invariably springs to mind are tiki huts, funky, inexpensive furniture and crudely constructed floor mats. But bamboo is quickly losing this tacky image thanks to some dedicated American followers who are using the plant for everything from flooring to home building.
Bamboo as a construction material isn't exactly new--it's been used around the world for thousands of years. As furniture it's had a long history as well, enjoying huge popularity here and abroad during the Victorian era. But its use in this country as a viable resource for structures has occurred only in the last decade or so.
Fans of the fiber say it's a more eco-friendly alternative to wood because bamboo is renewable and sustainable, with some species maturing in four years. They tout its hardness and strength (comparable to steel), its light weight and flexibility (better to withstand earthquakes). Bamboo can be used as food (some shoots are edible), and the fibers can also be woven into baskets and even clothes.
But there's still that tiki hut thing.
"I tell people I make bamboo flooring, and they picture little round things on the floor and say, 'Are you crazy?' " says Steen Ostenson, CEO of TimberGrass, a bamboo flooring and paneling company in Bainbridge Island, Wash. "Then they stand on it and don't even know it's bamboo. I feel our main job is really to educate people."
"There is a strong preconception about what the aesthetic might be," agrees Darrel DeBoer, an Alameda-based architect. "People automatically think of something really cheesy from the '50s. Then you start showing them some structures that don't have these associations, they're just really beautiful. It doesn't have to have a grass thatched roof."
Those who work with bamboo describe an almost epiphanic conversion. Ostenson, an architect and builder, recalls watching plywood come apart on a home he was building. After seeing bamboo flooring in 1993, "the light went on for me. I am into alternative community design using alternative energy and heat and waste water recovery. I thought, this is amazing. You can do so much with it, it's such a versatile fiber. This is something I really want to dedicate my life to."
His company mills its own bamboo, imported from China. The plants are cut into vertical strips, planed, hot-pressed and laminated, then installed like wood flooring. Ostenson says he uses an environmentally safe glue, and the floors can be stained or painted. With care, they should last 100 years or more.
