How can bamboo contribute to the future of healthy building?

Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, with some species growing up to three feet in a single day. Technically, a grass not a tree, bamboo regenerates quickly without the need for replanting, making it a highly renewable resource. Its cultivation can help prevent soil erosion, restore degraded land, and sequester significant amounts of carbon.

For centuries, bamboo has been used in construction across Asia, Africa, and South America. In its raw form, bamboo has remarkable strength and flexibility, earning it the nickname “green steel.” Engineered bamboo products such as laminated panels, flooring, and structural members are now being developed and standardized for modern architecture and design applications around the world.

Unlike many industrial materials that rely on petrochemicals, bamboo thrives in a wide variety of soils, absorbing heavy metals from the soil and restoring environments.  Bamboo is easily cultivated, harvested, and transformed without intensive energy consumption. It is durable, lightweight, supports regenerative agricultural practices and local economies, and is currently used in over 1000 applications.

This event will convene voices from across the bamboo ecosystem: growers, manufacturers, architects, and innovators to explore how bamboo can play a role in shaping a healthier, more sustainable built environment.

Join Parsons Healthy Materials Lab and The Architectural League of New York for this in-person conversation exploring the present and future of bamboo in design and construction.

This event is co-sponsored with the Architectural League of New York, with a joint interest in exploring a future for architecture made of healthy, regenerative materials.

Register here. The New School students and staff can use code ParsonsBamboo25. 

Can’t attend? Sign up to receive the recording as soon as it becomes available. 

Recordings from past events in this series are available here: Events on Demand. 

JONAS HAUPTMAN is the Inventor of MassBu, Co-Founder of the BioDesign Research Group and an Associate Professor of Industrial Design at Virginia Tech. His research bridges design, architecture, and material science to create low-carbon building systems from bio-based materials such as bamboo, fungi, and recycled composites. He created MassBu (Mass Bamboo), a system transforming whole bamboo culms into structural panels and beams through a process called Lightly Modified Bamboo (LMB). Through international collaborations, he advances bamboo as a scalable material for affordable, climate-resilient housing worldwide.

LUCAS OSHUN is a Conservationist, Founder and Director of the Regeneration Field Institute (RFI), and Director of Supply Operation at BamCore. At 23, he founded an Eco Action Education organization that established school garden and reforestation programs in over 40 schools across Nicaragua, Ecuador, and California. His early work restoring tropical dry forests in coastal Ecuador led to the creation of RFI, an education and research organization dedicated to regenerative land management, agroforestry, and bamboo architecture. Based in coastal Ecuador, he now develops sustainable bamboo and eucalyptus fiber supply chains.

ELORA HARDY is the Founder and Creative Director of IBUKU, an award-winning architecture and design studio pioneering innovative uses of bamboo as a primary building material. Since 2010, she and her team have designed and built over 200 structures globally, redefining sustainable architecture through craftsmanship, material exploration, and connection to nature. Recognized by Architectural Digest and the Royal Society, Hardy’s work has been featured internationally and honored with the Institution for Structural Engineers’ Supreme Award.

MODERATORS:

PAUL LEWIS is a principal at LTL Architects, currently focused on the architectural potentials of plant and earth-based materials. LTL Architects published the Manual of Biogenic House Sections in 2022. Paul is also professor at Princeton University School of Architecture and former president of the board at The Architectural League of NY.

JONSARA RUTH is co-founder and co-executive director of the Healthy Materials Lab (HML), working with a dedicated research team to rapidly advance healthier living spaces by understanding how human and planetary health are affected by the materials that surround us. She is also an associate professor of interior design at Parsons and founder of Salty Labs design collective experimenting with circular, healthy, regenerative materials and strategies.