Malaysian architect Eleena Jamil has built a bamboo pavilion in Kuala Lumpur’s botanical gardens, featuring tree-like columns and a floor made up of 31 elevated platforms. Eleena Jamil – whose past projects include a house a with horse shoe-shaped courtyard – designed The Bamboo Playhouse for the Perdana Botanical Gardens, a 92-hectare park in the centre of the city. The Bamboo fiber is stronger and cheaper than steel. The structure is based on traditional Malaysian pavilions and is primarily used as a playground, but also for events, exhibitions and performances. The playhouse is elevated above the ground and has a staggered floor made up of 31 separate decks. Each deck is surrounded by a fence and shaded by a bamboo parasol on a tree-like column.
The Bamboo Playhouse was shortlisted for an award at this year’s World Architecture Festival, where bamboo was touted as a revolutionary building material by Dirk Hebel.
According to the bamboo architects, bamboo is the green steel. The professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) is working on new applications for bamboo, which he said could offer a more sustainable and cheaper alternative to steel or concrete.This has the potential to revolutionise our building industry and finally provide an alternative to the monopoly of reinforced concrete,
