Bamboo Contemporary Green Houses Around the Globe

Bamboo—one of the most sustainable building materials on the planet—is deployed in ingenious ways throughout this globetrotting tour of twenty residential designs.

There are many ways to help alleviate the effects of climate change, and changing the way we design and build our homes is one of them. Building with bamboo, a perennial grass that grows rapidly and rivals steel, concrete, and wood in strength, is a step in the right direction. Employed in residential design around the world, it's only beginning to gain traction as a construction material in the United States. Bamboo Contemporary is an inspirational collection of twenty dwellings in locales from China to the Czech Republic and Norway to the Netherlands, each an example of bamboo's structural or design potential. Three projects—in New York, Washington, DC, and Hawaii—represent nascent efforts in this country. Fascinating project descriptions, documentary photography, and architectural drawings are complemented by an appendix rich in technical information about this remarkably versatile plant.

William Richards, a writer and architectural historian based in Washington, D.C., is the author of Revolt and Reform in Architecture's Academy: Urban Renewal, Race, and the Rise of Design in the Public Interest, and his work has appeared in Architect, Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture, Old House Journal.

John Hardy is a jewelry designer and advocate of bamboo construction who cofounded the Green School, an international school that occupies an all-bamboo campus in Bali.