Exhibitor’s Stories

Traditional building material and digital technology come together

ZCB Bamboo Pavilion was a four-storey-high long-span bamboo diagrid shell structure with a footprint of approximately 350m² and a seating capacity of 200 people. Its 475 large bamboo poles were bent onsite and hand-tied together with metal wire using techniques based on Cantonese bamboo scaffolding techniques. A white tensile fabric is stretched over the structure and is brightly lit from inside the three legs. Designed by a research team led by Kristof Crolla at the CUHK School of Architecture, the structure involved a research project that investigated using the combination of computational design tools and existing building methods. The design was developed further by the research team in collaboration with structural engineers and bamboo consultants, using digital physics simulation engines, physical model making, and large-scale prototyping to derive its final form.