Grow Your Own City
The Grow Your Own City Partnership is an ongoing research initiative, drawing together a broad array of stakeholders to catalyse the commercial adoption of structural laminate bamboo for urban construction. Led by the Bamboo Village Trust, Indobamboo and Cave Urban, the research project considers the whole value chain, connecting rural village-based agroforestry with the fast-growing urban centres of Indonesia, to unlock a multitude of socio-environmental benefits across the bamboo supply chain.
Laminate bamboo is a pioneering innovation that has the capacity to displace current emissions-intensive materials within the building sector and is a zero carbon material that can be grown, manufactured and utilized within Indonesia and exported to overseas markets. In doing so, the Grow Your Own City partnership aims to develop a commercially-viable business model that will see the emergence of “restoration buildings” that can be quantified for their ecological, social and economic benefits. In our theory of change, ‘early adopter’ developers incorporate structural engineered bamboo into landmark projects in a variety of urban and semi-urban settings, as proofs of concept that will stimulate broader adoption of the technology in densely-built parts of Indonesia in the longer term.
Via: Grey Organschi Architects
Alan Organschi of Yale University, has championed the notion of the“Timber City”, where cities function as an urban carbon sink creating a systemic shift from a mineral-to forest-based building economy.
Value Chain for Labuan Bajo Pavilion
To reach this goal, our partnership connects value chains within Indonesia, from forested landscapes to construction sites. Promoting buildings made from structural engineered bamboo will generate a ‘pull’ factor that will create incentives for rural communities to plant and process more bamboo in existing bamboo supply chains. Our experience has shown that bamboo planted in an agroforestry system generates a multitude of benefits that extend well beyond the commercial value of bamboo, making rural communities more resilient.
The proposed solution simultaneously tackles several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, namely SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). Beyond that, research has shown that the climate, soil and water benefits that ripple out from the use of bamboo in construction address every single one of the SDGs.
Engineered Bamboo Value Chain
Cave Urban. Indobamboo and current partnerships contributing towards the Grow Your Own City chain
The vision of the Grow Your Own City partnership is to catalyse the commercial adoption of structurally engineered bamboo is not something that can be done in isolation by a single entity. It requires cooperation between industry, research institutions, government agencies, advocacy bodies and funding organisations to achieve.
Interested to know more? See our recent paper from the World Bamboo Congress
Thank you to all of the Grow Your Own City Collaborators
Government
Research
Industry
Advocacy
Funding
The Labuan Bajo Pavilion, run as a design-build collaboration between Indobamboo and Cave Urban, drew upon prior experience building laminate bamboo structures in Indonesia and Australia.
To find out more about the Labuan Bajo Pavilion click here.
Designed as a kit of parts, prefabricated at the Indobamboo Factory and then shipped to Labuan Bajo for assembly on site.
Cave Urban and Indobamboo Lestari