Model Bamboo House in Guyaquil, Ecuador

Bamboo housing is not a new concept in Latin American countries, especially in Colombia, Costa Rica and Ecuador. Bamboo has been one of the important building materials of traditional houses in these countries.

However, the system of building differs from place to place especially if it originates from the traditional housing culture. Principal and visible differences are generally found in wall systems. Each system has advantages and disadvantages. However, unfortunately, some of these traditional systems are vanishing due to people's attraction to new and modern building technology.

In order to bring all the housing systems together, INBAR initiated a housing project in Guyaquil, Ecuador. The main objectives of the project were; i) to exchange knowledge on housing systems in Asia and Latin America ii) to document all the housing systems so as to enable their transfer to other parts of the world and iii) to assess and compare the different variables of each wall system with others particularly in terms of cost, time and effectiveness. A model house was built in Guyaquil to achieve these objectives. The project was jointly funded and managed by INBAR Latin America Regional Office (LARO) and Catholic University, Guyaquil. Arch. Jorge Moran (INBAR, LA Office), Shyam K Paudel (INBAR China) and Arch. Enrique Romero (Catholic University) were involved in designing and implementing the project.

The main features of the project were-

I) Inclusion of 10 different types of bamboo walls in a single house. All the known traditional and improved wall systems were included so as to bring all the housing knowledge together in one example building. More importantly the existing wall systems were modified and adjusted according to the local situations so as to improve quality and to reduce the cost.

II) About 50 students from the Faculty of Architecture, Catholic University, were directly involved in the construction process, giving them hands on experience of designing and building bamboo houses and their components.

III) The project directly benefited a poor family. The finished house was donated to Senora Marelona who had been living in a Hogar de Cristo house for the last 15 years. Due to her poor economic situation, it was impossible for her to repair or reconstruct the house and the house could have been collapsed at anytime.

Another important feature of the house is that it received a lot of attention from the public. Many people who passed by the road next to the house were attracted to it and wanted to learn more about the project and the house was also featured on the national TV news. Thus the project had a direct awareness raising impact on the general public.

The project lasted six weeks, including project conceptualization, design and implementation. The final cost of the project is still to be calculated but is estimated at around $5000 nit including the contribution of students and other indirect costs incurred during the project implementation.

The Walls -

As mentioned earlier, 10 different types of walls were fabricated in this house, which are briefly introduced below -

1. Traditional bahareque: Traditional bahareque uses wooden and bamboo poles as the main wall frame. Bamboo slats (laths) are placed at 5-cm spacings on the both sides of the main frame and the hollow space between the laths is filled with packed mud. This is also known as a solid bahareque. The wall is generally plastered with mud and cow dung mixed with rice straw. However, in this particular house all the poles were bamboo and instead of bamboo laths, flattened bamboo (also known as esterilla) were placed horizontally with the hard external part of the bamboo facing the interior of the wall. The hollow part between the horizontal bamboo esterilla was filled with mud.

2. Improved bahareque: The main structure of this wall is similar to that of traditional bahareque. However, the spaces between the horizontal canes (esterilla) were not filled. This is known as a hollow bahareque. Such a wall is very light and suitable for warm and humid climate. Bamboo esterilla then is covered with chicken mesh to facilitate plastering with cement mortar.

3. Traditional Quincha using a wooden frame: The main structure of this wall is a wooden frame. Each side of the frame is covered with horizontally placed bamboo esterilla with the green side facing inwards. In some cases bamboo laths are used the fix the flattened bamboo to the wall panel. The wall is then plastered with cement mortar.

4. Traditional Quincha using bamboo frame (poles): Traditional quincha is generally fabricated in wooden frame with woven or flattened bamboo and is plastered with mud. However, this type of traditional wall was fabricated with bamboo poles and flattened bamboo with the green side facing inwards. The exterior of the wall was plastered with mud and cow dung.

5. Improved Quincha: The structure of this wall is similar with that of traditional quincha with bamboo frame. However, the wall is plastered with cement mortar over chicken mesh.

6. Modified IPIRTI - This system was developed at IPIRTI India. This is a type of modular system in which poles are erected at equal spacings of 1 to 1.5m. Poles are drilled at 15-cm intervals so as to insert steel dowels. Bamboo splits are then tied to the steel dowels horizontally and vertically to form a grid. Chicken mesh is applied and the wall plastered with cement mortar. The total thickness of wall is about 5cm. However, unlike in India, prefabricated trusses were not used in this case due to the amount of work involved. Additionally, Chonta (Palm hard wood) was used instead of steel dowel so as to reduce the cost of the house, and the wall plates (wooden beams) were replaced by bamboo.

7. Improved Hogar de Cristo wall: A typical Hogar de Cristo wall includes a wooden frame with flattened bamboo on one side of the frame. In this case, however, flattened bamboo is used on both sides of the frame. The soft inner parts of the flattened bamboo, which faces exterior of the wall, is plastered with cement mortar and the hard outer part of the bamboo, which faces interior of wall, is left as it is without plastering so as to show bamboo view.

8. Diagonal bamboo wall with plaster - The main purpose of this wall is aesthetic. Bamboo laths are placed diagonally on both sides of the wooden or bamboo frame sandwiched with chicken mesh. The laths are spaced about 5cm from each other. The spaces between the laths are plastered with cement mortar.

9. Bamboo esterilla view - This wall is made of flattened bamboo in which the outer part of the wall is left natural or varnished and the inner part of the wall is plastered with cement mortar.

10. Bamboo strips view: This type of wall is similar to the esterilla wall but instead of using flattened bamboo, laths are placed in different directions. The inner part of the wall is plastered with cement mortar.