Bamboo: A sustainable solution to Lombok’s housing needs

Lombok is an earthquake prone island in Indonesia that was struck by several earthquakes in 2018 measuring up to a magnitude of 7. These were not unusually powerful earthquakes for the region, but the lack of reinforcement in the buildings meant the damage, and consequential loss of life, was far greater than it should have been.

Concerned that buildings in this seismic region were not capable of withstanding earthquakes due to the techniques and materials used, Els Houttave, founder of the Lombok-based charity Grenzeloos Milieu was determined to do all she could to prevent history repeating itself. She sought a sustainable and resilient solution and asked for the help and advice of an old friend, who was working as a bridge engineer at Ramboll. Within weeks of the earthquake, Ramboll’s UK-based ‘Making a Difference Network’ had acquired funding from the Ramboll Foundation and arranged a fact-finding mission to Lombok for one of our structural engineers.

The properties of bamboo as a building material have been known for centuries, but had fallen out of use in the region in recent times. Yet with an abundance of bamboo forests surrounding the devastated villages, it could provide a lightweight, strong and sustainable solution to the island’s housing needs.

With little known about the commercial applications of bamboo and few industry standards, Ramboll reached out to University College London (UCL) to test bamboo properties and worked in partnership with Grenzeloos Milieu to design a blueprint for safe, affordable and attractive housing using locally sourced bamboo.

Project success would be dependent on local adoption, both in terms of making the templates attractive to locals, but also to ensure that the skills required to construct them were available within the community. To assist with these objectives, two community centres were constructed to provide an example of the housing. Ramboll volunteers facilitated the build to ensure the safe implementation of the design and we employed local bamboo craftsmen to work alongside those without experience of the material to ensure the transfer of knowledge and skills.

In addition to meeting the immediate needs of Lombok, step-by-step design guides have been made freely available to all so that they can be adopted across the entire region, for humanitarian purposes.