Research into bamboo shows a sustainable and natural raw building material
Loading player for https://video.vt.edu/media/1_bty65hjz...
Category: research Video duration: 2:38 Research into bamboo shows a sustainable and natural raw building material
Lee Friesland
Date published: 23 Feb 2022 Video views: 437
Jonas Hauptman hopes to teach a new generation of students how to use raw natural materials, and turn these resources into something that has a more environmentally friendly impact. Hauptman, an associate professor in the School of Architecture and Design, is researching bamboo as this sustainable material in hopes that it can be used as a more eco friendly alternative to traditional building constructs.
We research bamboo as a building material, and likely as a product material too. And we do that because we're interested in finding sustainable materials to design and fabricate from. It has huge environmental potential as a greener building material to compare it to concrete or steel, especially, but even if you compare it to stone or wood or other natural materials. Bamboo occurs much, much faster than other materials. You look at a bamboo pole, if you look right on to it. It's not very straight, right? It has, it has bumps and irregularities. And so what we're doing to it is taking some of those irregularities and we're trying to give them some normalizable surfaces so we put a flat on it, and now it has at least one side that's flat. And that flat side allows us to, to place this precisely in the assembly. In the beginning we thought, Oh, we'll turn them into squares. We can control this material like it's a solid. Now we've realized, no the material has to speak to us too not us to speak to the material. And that's what we try to teach our students how to have a dialogue with material. Both because that brings kind of craft into design, but also because I believe that it also brings the possibility of students to develop a more sensitive and sustainable approach towards design where we value people, planet and profit simultaneously, not just profit and people. And so the bamboo is part of the planet and that's where we kind of hope to shift the emphasis. Presently all over the world. But even more so, we leave the western world. The dominant use, whether it's in housing or in larger buildings, is to use concrete and steel. In North America we use mostly wood, but in North America we have lots of softwood trees to harvest for that purpose. In other parts of the world, the ones that are developing the fastest are in the tropics. They don't have the same wood. If we're able to build out of a sustainable material that can be farmed, we can hugely lessen the environmental impact. It's a material that has great structural potential because of its taxonomy, but doesn't take very long for the world to kind of give us, and it regenerates. So we research bamboo because we're interested in reducing carbon and making a kind of greener future for, for the planet and for humanity.
College of Architecture, Arts, and Design
Partnership brings immersive multimedia to Winter Session , video Date: Jan 18, 2023
Students perform mock search and rescue research using augmented reality , video Date: Dec 19, 2022
Music education student pursues passion in film scoring , video Date: Dec 16, 2022
Using eye-tracking technology to study athlete head impacts , video Date: Dec 13, 2022
Finding 'sense of place' on Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus , video
CAUS Group Builds COVID-Safe Collaboration Space In Newman Library , video
Students offer first "Tech's Giving" event , video
Drone Technology and Flight Operations course offers infinite possibilities , video Date: Jan 27, 2023
VetMed - 2022 a year in review , video Date: Dec 15, 2022
Meet Ringo, the police patrol pony , video Date: Jan 23, 2023
Recycle Right at Virginia Tech , video Date: Jan 19, 2023
VT Therapy Dogs | "These dogs are a miracle." , video Date: Jan 18, 2023
2023 Spring Semester Begins , video Date: Jan 17, 2023
Chitrasena Dance Company engages with community , video Date: Jan 17, 2023
The Joy of Doodling 2022: The Man Behind The Doodles , video Date: Dec 11, 2022
Veterans Day Remembrance Ceremony 2022 , video Date: Nov 11, 2022
New Cadet Parade 2022 , video Date: Sep 07, 2022
American Red Cross profiles student athlete to highlight need for blood donations , video Date: Jan 20, 2023
Virginia Seafood Industry Boosts State's Economy by $1.1 Billion , video Date: Jan 09, 2023
Good Morning America visits Virginia Tech Transportation Institute , video Date: Jan 03, 2023
Virginia Tech hosts its first STEM and College Fair in Alexandria, Virginia , video Date: Dec 13, 2022
SPIA students research cycling solutions in Falls Church , video Date: Dec 09, 2022
The Green Labs Program at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute , video Date: Dec 09, 2022