Bamboo is an environmentally friendly renewable natural resource that is regionally widely available. It is strong, light and easy to process and transport. In Hong Kong’s construction bamboo mostly appears in temporary scaffolding or festival structures. Globally it is usually applied as surrogate for wood or steel, rather than in ways that utilise the material’s unique bending properties and strength. In contrast, the ZCB Bamboo Pavilion maximise this latent material property.

The project is built from 473 large natural bamboo poles, bent onsite to shape the structure. They are hand-tied together with metal wire using techniques based on century-old traditional Cantonese bamboo scaffolding craftsmanship. The pavilion is a large diagrid shell structure that is folded down into three hollow columns. These columns rest on three circular concrete footings. A tailor-made white tensile fabric is stretched over the structure and is brightly lit from inside the three legs.

Building the project challenged the boundaries of the architect’s design control. Bamboo has widely varying geometric, dimensional, and performative properties, and the scaffolding industry does not use conventional architectural drawings for its intuitive constructions. To deal with these unpredictabilities, new methods were developed that merged precise digital design and simulation systems with inconsistent natural resources. Through the introduction of digital form-finding and real-time physics simulation tools, the project showcases how the endangered craftsmanship of Bamboo Scaffolding Construction in Hong Kong can evolve for the 21st century.