Bamboo Style

Besides feeding pandas and making a yummy addition to many Asian dishes, bamboo is also used as a building material, both functional and decorative. The dried stems are extremely sturdy and lend themselves to a multitude of uses. Shigeru Ban, for example, found a way to create lumber from laminated woven bamboo for a house he designed in Beijing. Other houses show off bamboo in more straightforward ways, lining the ceilings or floors with stems, or even forming walls. Bamboo is also used to construct furniture, lending a chair or a bed a warm, earthy feeling. This unique look book captures the many uses of bamboo in houses throughout China, Japan, and Indonesia.