ABSTRACT
New materials and techniques can enhance the designer’s palette of possibilities and increase the productivity of construction methodologies. Bamboo is another material that is growing in popularity as a modern construction material. Once thought of as the poor man’s timber, it is challenging steel as reinforcement in concrete, due to its similarly high tensile strength. Like wood, the use of bamboo in construction sequesters carbon. Bamboo products are geometrically stable, they are resistant to rot, they have better fire resistance than wood, and they are generally aesthetically pleasing. Self-healing concrete isn’t too far removed from one of the proposed construction materials for floating cities, in which an electrode is used to expose underwater minerals to an electric current, causing them to begin to aggregate around the electrode. Eventually, this process can create a building block that has the chemical properties of the minerals of which it is composed, the material properties of concrete and a natural limestone coating.
