Bamboo house from Pakistan is not afraid of floods and costs $88

Historically, bamboo did not grow in Pakistan and was not used by people. However, Yasmin Lari, an influential Pakistani architect and founder of the Pakistan Heritage Foundation, discovered that this is the ideal material for the serial construction of low-cost housing.

Strictly speaking, bamboo is not a tree, but a grass with a woody trunk. It is famous for its high structural strength and amazing growth rate: it takes only 3 years from planting a plant to obtaining a building material. “Architects call it natural steel,” says Liu Kuwei, a construction engineer and member of the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization.

Stable in every sense

Lari set out to create a dwelling that would be accessible to poor rural residents, comfortable and safe in case of flooding. The latter problem is acute in Pakistan: in Sindh province alone, 33 million people were forced to change their place of residence last year due to the elements.

Yasmin Lari and the house she invented
(c) Metalocus

The house she created is sold as an assembly kit, similar to the frame houses used in Western countries. You can buy it for only 25 thousand Pakistani rupees, the equivalent of $ 88. The hut consists of two tiers: The high base of bamboo columns increases protection in case of flooding.

The project is rapidly gaining popularity: over the past year, about 5,000 such huts have been erected. As a rule, future owners assemble it themselves using a video instruction posted by the architect on Youtube.

Bamboo forest: like our native birch forest!
(c) Wikipedia

During growth, bamboo absorbs a large amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and large-sized machinery or synthetic materials are not used in the construction of the house, so this hut is also amazingly environmentally friendly.

Ethnic architecture is a dynamically developing trend in construction. Earlier, Techinsider told how architects from Kazakhstan developed the project of an innovative yurt.

And we are all waiting for one of their Russian colleagues to come up with a Russian hut of the 21st century – warm, comfortable and eco–friendly.

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