The Guadua Bamboo Parking Garage in The Hague stands as our flagship commercial project in the Netherlands. Serving as the first of several large-scale urban installations, this seven-level structure provides parking for approximately 250 vehicles. The entire facade features premium Guadua angustifolia poles, harvested and processed at our specialized facilities in Colombia to meet strict European quality standards.
The use of bamboo in modern European architecture is only limited to a hand full of real life examples, unlike many Asian and South American countries were bamboo construction is part of everyday culture and history. One of the reasons is the fact that bamboo doesn’t grow native in Europe, therefore it is an exotic timber alternative that is not well understood yet.
Masters of Bamboo (formerly Bamboo Import Europe) in the Netherlands however, is successfully promoting and implementing the use of bamboo. In the past few years the company has grown exponentially which translates into exclusive building projects that will serve as unique landmarks in The Netherlands.
The first phase of the Guadua Bamboo Parking Garage in the Laakhaven district utilized approximately 2.37 kilometers of graded bamboo poles, all of which were harvested, treated, and exported from our specialized facilities in Colombia.
Although the assembly of the second phase (levels 3 through 7) was scheduled for 2015, I visited the site personally following the completion of the first phase in October 2014. At the request of our team in Colombia, I wore the Colombian national football shirt during this visit as a token of their immense pride in seeing their hard work successfully integrated into a major European infrastructure project.
Following the success of this installation, Guadua Bamboo SAS went on to provide the structural materials for the even larger Amsterdam Slotervaart Medical Center Car Park, the largest of its kind to date.
Building codes in The Netherlands allow for bamboo as support or are the culms cosmetic only? With these projects do you see clearer codes and allowances being made to use bamboo as structural units? It’s a nice look on the building.
The bamboo poles serve to enclose the parking area but they are not structural. Chances are very slim for bamboo poles to become a certified structural building material in Europe or the US. That’s mainly because each bamboo culm (even from the same species) shows inconsistent test results. Age, part of the culm, climate and soil conditions, all affect the mechanical properties of bamboo. Currently, only engineered bamboo (laminated or strand woven) can be certified as a structural building material.