Vanke Pavilion using natural wheat straw boards in 2010 EXPO

The main building material of the pavilion is straw boards made from natural wheat straw. In addition, the ventilation system of the pavilion makes use of both thermal pressure and wind pressure, which shall enable maximal natural ventilation, reduce the utilization of air conditioners and accordingly lower the energy consumption in the pavilion.

Meanwhile, the seven buildings all have skylights, which are installed on the top of each building and made of blue ETFE plastic films. These skylights can allow in the sunshine, accordingly reducing the energy consumption of lighting.

The open water area can adjust the temperature and moisture of the exhibition area, creating a natural and agreeable niche. The cortile formed by several exhibition halls will also provide visitors a comfortable space.

Vanke Pavilion will use the wheat straw board made of natural wheat straw supplied by Leenderson, offering another effective usage of straw and reducing consumption of the forest resources. When it is completed, the visitors can smell the scent of straw when approaching the pavilion.

Leenderson Panel Boards Holding (http://www.leenderson.com) is a newly established European company. Its Europeanholding is headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands. It holds an exclusive worldwide production license agreement with the Alberta Innovates Technology Futures of Edmonton, Canada for producing and selling of “Oriented Structural Straw Board”(OSSB) and MDF Panel Board.

By using Agri Fiber to create buildings out of OSSB Panel Boards Leenderson is building earthquake-resistant low cost housing, using OSSB in combination with Light Gauge Steel(LGS) and western construction methods while at the same time generating a new source of income for Chinese farmers and significantly contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions by avoiding the burning of straw as well as reducing the bricks and cement production. All these aspects and the strong unique product parameters of the Leenderson OSSB create a high potential for The Low Carbon Economy.

Shenzhen Climate Analysis

Shanghai 2010 Expo: Bamboo “German-Chinese House“

Designed by Markus Heinsdorff, the “German-Chinese House” is not only the architectural highlight of its Expo presence; it is also a forward-looking example for the use of natural construction material. It is the only two-storey building at the Expo whose load-bearing structures are made of bamboo.

Tradition and high-tech

The “German-Chinese House” was designed by Markus Heinsdorff, a designer and installation artist. Heinsdorff already constructed around 20 delicate bamboo pavilions for the previous stations of “Germany and China – Moving Ahead Together”. In China bamboo enjoys a rich tradition as a construction material and Heinsdorff made this material the hallmark of the event series. Heinsdorff’s buildings are modern, multifunctional rooms as well as works of art combined in one. They represent a symbiosis of natural and high-tech materials. As a construction material, bamboo is especially environmentally friendly and efficient in the use of resources. The grass grows up to 30 centimetres per day – faster than any other plant. Working with bamboo does not require the tree to be cut down. There is hardly any other material that is as elastic while at the same time as hard and firm as bamboo. Bamboo also possesses a unique charm.


Mobile and recyclable

The “German-Chinese House” is a bamboo membrane building with a walk-through surface area of 330 square metres spread over the two floors. For the roof’s supporting construction, Markus Heinsdorff used eight-metre-long canes of Julong bamboo, a rare and particularly long type of bamboo from South China. Before the actual construction, the bamboo was treated with a special fire-resistant chemical and has received a certification for fire resistance. In the interior of the building, the artist worked with glue-laminated bamboo segments. For both materials, new connecting and finishing techniques, which were developed especially for this project, were used. The supporting beams of the bamboo segments, which measure up to six metres long, make a self-supporting room possible on the upper floor. Connecting joints of steel on the roof hold together the bamboo supporting frame structure. They are set in HVFA concrete with a high concentration of flue ash. The roof consists of special PVC membranes. On the building’s façade, the bamboo has been combined with light-translucent ETFE films. The building is environmentally friendly and mobile: it can be taken apart and reassembled elsewhere. All materials are either reusable or completely recyclable.

Futuristic and multifunctional

The design of the “German-Chinese House” has the effect of being light, elegant and futuristic. It combines stylistic elements from both cultures. The roof surfaces and supporting beams in the interior remind one of bamboo fans or paper umbrellas, while the facade, thanks to its form and translucence, calls to mind a finely polished gemstone. The triangular entrances and exits resemble Gothic building forms. Both ends of the hall are open spaces. The house is covered with a white, shiny material that has been stretched between the bamboo canes and makes the house look like a beautifully lit lamp at night.

The building contains exhibition, game and conference areas. Along the longitudinal axis of the large hall on the ground floor, visitors can take part in an interactive city game. The first floor in four-metre height is accessible by a steel staircase, which is supported by a woven supporting pillar. Here, visitors will find an 80-square-meter-large lounge and conference centre, which is open to the roof structure. For noise protection, the room has been completely enclosed with 12-millimetre-thick transparent polycarbonate plates. Also on the upper floor are three oval structures connected to each other.

Shanghai 2010 Expo: Bamboo German-Chinese House

MUDI
Munich Urban Design International Co., Ltd.

T +86(0)21 6381 8852
F +86(0)21 6381 2082

shanghai@mudi.com

Bamboo road bridge can support 16-tonne trucks

Bridges built from bamboo instead of steel could provide a cheaper, more environmentally sustainable engineering solution in China, a recent experiment suggests.

A novel type of bridge with horizontal beams made from a bamboo composite proved strong enough to support even heavy trucks in tests. The bamboo beams are cheaper and more environmentally friendly to make than steel or concrete, yet offer comparable structural strength.

Yan Xiao, who works at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, US, and at Hunan University in China, led the development of the bamboo beams used to make the bridge.

Instead of using round, pole-like pieces of unprocessed bamboo, which have been used as building material for many thousands of years, he came up with a way of assembling timber-like beams from many smaller strips of bamboo.

Precise details on the process remain proprietary, but Xiao says the strips are cut from large stalks of bamboo, arranged in multiple layers, and bonded together with glue. The technique has never been used to build such large beams before, Xiao says.

Sustainable harvest

Last week workers finished assembling a 10-metre long bridge of Xiao's design in the village of Leiyang in Hunan province, southern China.

Using prefabricated beams, it took a team of eight workers just a week to assemble and did not require heavy construction equipment. It proved strong enough to carry a 16-tonne truck and, and based on structural testing of the bridge, should be able to support even more weight, Xiao says.

Pound-for-pound, bamboo is stronger than steel when stretched and more robust than concrete when compressed. Also, stalks several meters tall mature in just a few years, rather than a few decades as with trees, so more can be harvested from the same amount of land.

Furthermore, since it is a grass it can be harvested like mowing a lawn - leaving the root system intact so that the plant can regrow.

Green solution

Bamboo beams could work for bridges up to 30-metres long, Xiao says, making them suitable for carrying pedestrians in cities or cars on highway overpasses.

"I think very highly of the work that professor Xiao is doing," says architect Darrel DeBoer, who works with unusual building materials. "It's quite worthwhile to find alternatives to the concrete that we are using way too much of."

DeBoer notes that cement production releases a lot of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide: 5-10% of global CO2, according to different estimates. This is an unavoidable part of the chemical process used to make cement from calcium carbonate.

Bamboo, on the other hand, soaks up CO2, as it grows. "From an environmental perspective, bamboo is a great choice," DeBoer says.

The Bamboo Builder and his GluBam® Construction

As a child growing up in northern China, Yan Xiao loved flying kites. A born engineer, he made them himself out of paper sails and plain bamboo frames. The kites were durable and cheap. On a trip to the region’s vast bamboo forests, the memory of those kites gave the 47-year-old Xiao a flash of inspiration: Bamboo was strong enough for kites, but he suspected that it could be fortified to make even sturdier things, like bridges and houses.

Xiao, now an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, scoured textbooks and the Internet, hoping to find historical precedent for structural bamboo. His research had urgency. Most of China has been stripped of timber-worthy trees, so rural buildings are often made of shoddy concrete, which is exactly what led to the catastrophic school collapses during the earthquakes in Sichuan province in May. What Xiao found wasn’t terribly useful: a wealth of arty one-off projects, but nothing a contractor could ever build with.

At the USC Stevens Institute Innovation Showcase, held on March 28th, 2007, Prof. Yan Xiao’s innovative design of modern bamboo bridges was selected as one of the only three exhibitions. Professor Xiao spent his sabbatical leave in 2006 conducting and directing collaborative research at the Hunan University of China, creating ways to use the “giant grass” as basic fibers for making composite materials for structural applications. The new structural material is trademarked as GluBam®.

Prof. Xiao came up with the idea of using bamboo materials in modern structures, such as buildings and bridges, because of its huge potential for structurally sound, economical and environmentally-friendly structures of all kinds. With his collaborators in Hunan, Prof. Xiao designed and constructed several prototype GluBam pedestrian bridges and a truck-safe roadway bridge, which was awarded by the Popular Science Magazine as one of the Best of What’s New in 2008.

After the great Wenchuan Earthquake in China, Dr. Xiao immediately went to work designing and deploying bamboo shelters for the schools and villages in the quake devastated Sichuan area. In 2009, working with INBAR, one of the major international organization promoting bamboo usage and plantation, Dr. Xiao designed and built a California-style demonstration house in the famous Black Bamboo Park in Beijing. It is expected that even a partial replacement of current concrete or steel construction by natural and green materials such as bamboo would significantly improve the growing environmental problems of the world.







Bamboo is a remarkable material. Some species have stalks as dense as hardwood. It’s the world’s fastest-growing woody plant, and it’s an exceptionally good absorber of carbon. But its irregular, knotty form is a problem. Making a reliable bamboo structure used to mean picking through stalks to find the ones that met precise measurements. Timber, on the other hand, can be cut to standard sizes. So Xiao set about developing a process to transform bamboo strips into easy-to-manage beams. In 2006 he devised GluBam, bamboo timber sturdy enough for beams and trusses. Last winter, he returned to China and, using just an eight-man crew and no machinery, built a 33-foot GluBam bridge capable of supporting eight tons in the remote, ramshackle Hunan province town of Leiyang. The feat was so surprising, it was covered on China’s national news.

The bridge Yan Xiao built in Leiyang with GluBam was the town’s first. Each beam that spans the brick columns was created using Xiao’s novel process of transforming irregular bamboo into a practical building material. First he tore strips of bamboo from the stalk and arranged them in such a way as to provide the most strength. He then coated the strips with glue and compressed them in a self-built hydraulic press into beams, 33 feet long and up to three feet wide, each capable of supporting eight tons. Xiao says that the beams cost just 20 percent as much as imported lumber. Better still, rural China has a constantly replenishing supply of bamboo.

Since then, Xiao has been busy building GluBam houses and classrooms in parts of Sichuan leveled by earthquakes. But he hopes that GluBam’s most positive effect might be an overhaul of the bamboo industry itself. China produces up to a third of the world’s bamboo—Hunan a quarter of that output—but much of it goes to low-value, barely profitable uses, such as concrete molds and chopsticks. GluBam could spark a dynamic industry in China and provide a sustainable replacement for current forestry operations worldwide. “That was the intent all along,” Xiao says. “This could open a vast market. It could create a whole new source of money and jobs.”—Cliff Kuang



Read more:
http://www.glubam.com/
http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~yanxiao/

Hygroscopic Climatic Envelope in Ancient Southern China：Adobe Buildings (Tu-Lou)

Chinese traditional residential building is a unique wealth in the course of human construction development. Research on the ecological experiences of Chinese traditional residential building can give a good deal of enlightment on the modem sustainable architecture practice. The adobe building in China is a unique residential building in the world.

The experimental results show quatitively the dynamic behavior of indoor environment of adobe buildings. Computer simulations using the written-by-author program have been executed with boundary conditions corresponding to the natural climate. Comparisons with experimental results and numerical solutions show good agreement with the proposed models. The simulation results also show clearly the dynamic thermal and moisture adjusting effect by interior materials of adobe buildings.

Building Skin Fabric

The membrane is constructed from 2 skins of PTFE coated fibreglass separated by an air gap of approximately 500mm and pre-tensioned over a series of trussed arches. These arches span up to 50 metres between the outer bedroom wings of the hotel which frame the atrium, and are aligned with the vertical geometry of the building. The double-curved membrane panels so formed are able to take positive wind pressures by spanning from truss to truss and negative wind pressures by spanning sideways. Additional cables have been provided running on the surface of the fabric to reduce the deflection of the membrane.

Hygroscopic Climatic Envelope

::Hygroscopic Climatic Modulated Boundary::

The hygroscopic building envelope is an adaptive biomimetic skin where all of the components for dehumidifying air and harvesting energy and water are placed within the building façade.

The demands on conventional HVAC systems to cool and dehumidify interior spaces for comfort in hot and humid climates requires more energy use in building operations. Energy use in buildings and production of green house gases contributes to global climate change.

Hot and humid climates are generally hot in the summer, cool in the winter, and has significant year round precipitation. The climate type is prevalent in Gulf Coast, Mid-Atlantic, Mississippi Valley, and Southern Appalachia in the United States. Global distributions of this climate are present in rapidly developing areas of rising fossil fuel use and water needs in China, Australia, and South America.

The hygroscopic building envelope uses a solution to interact with exterior hot, humid air to absorb water and dehumidify outside air for use in interior spaces to satisfy comfort requirements.

It is a filter that allows air from the outside to pass through and enter a cavity where a hygroscopic solution collects water and photovoltaic fibers collect solar energy allowing dehumidified air to pass through vent flaps to the interior.

A hygroscopic building envelope that harvests water from humid air must use a hygroscopic brine solution. The hygroscopic solution readily absorbs moisture in the air through the attraction of strong ionic bonds of negative ions of the brine to positive ions of hydrogen in water vapor.

Water harvesting uses a capillary transport sensing tube system, generative air circulation and integrated solar cells in an experimental fiber form. Controls within the material system respond to varying environmental conditions for the production of water, energy and air movement.

It differs from conventional systems because it does not depend primarily on the supplying or removing of energy through mechanically dominant active means based on fossil fuels.

It uses micro wind driven generators and thin and flexible solar collecting photovoltaic fibers for onsite energy generation that supports the hygroscopic process.

The hygroscopic building envelope can sense and respond. Driven by the varied, differential, gradient and dynamic conditions of the exterior environment of hot and humid climate, the hygroscopic building envelope responds to these conditions by altering the absorption characteristics of the hygroscopic brine solution.

A color change property in the hygroscopic brine solution is visible to both the building occupant and the observer from the exterior of the hygroscopic boundary. The experience of the hygroscopic boundary working fluid in operation is dynamic and real-time response to the environment.

The hygroscopic building envelope employs the use of sodium chloride and emerging natural high strength organic bio-plastics for the transport system.

The hygroscopic building envelope system reduces the need for conventional air conditioning systems to dehumidify interior air. The HVAC system is only needed to cool the interior air. This reduces one of the major energy usages in building operations typically required to cool and dehumidify interior spaces in hot and humid climates.

Hygroscopic building envelope proposed benefits::

Improved Indoor Air Quality:
Hygroscopic building envelope uses natural ventilation as well as a computational control system for increasing ventilation through renewable sources to potentially improve indoor air quality. The hygroscopic brine solution uses a salt that naturally inhibits microbiological growth by maintaining lower humidity levels. Lower humidity in building interior spaces prevents moisture, mildew and rot in building materials.

CFC Free:
Hygroscopic brine solution does not use CFC’s for moisture removal.

No Duct Systems:
Hygroscopic building envelope has the potential to eliminate ducts as dry air is delivered to the interior space for active sensible cooling system.

Lower Peak Electric Demand:
Switch latent cooling to alternate energy sources such as thermodynamic transformation in entropy energy recovery, fiber solar photovoltaic system, air flow pressure and driven wind generators, steam, and heat recovery.

Increased Comfort via Envelope Dominant System:
Independent control of humidity and temperature because hygroscopic building envelope controls humidity while conventional system or active chilled beam systems controls temperature.

Some Famous Tenspression (tensegrity) Building

The Kurilpa Bridge is a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the Brisbane River in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Kurilpa Bridge is the world’s largest tensegrity bridge.The bridge structure comprises 18 structural steel bridge decks, 20 structural steel masts and 16 horizontal spars or in layman's terms horizontal masts. 72 precast concrete deck slabs sit on the main bridge deck and are secured to the steel structure and together by in-situ concrete stitch pours. The complex cabling system comprises 80 main galvanised spiral strand cables and 252 tensegrity cables that are made from superduplex stainless steel.

This is a 18-meter-high sculptures based on tensegrity concepts：Needle Tower (1968).
This very tall abstract sculpture depicts a tapering tower that is made of aluminum and stainless steel. Pipes of varying lengths and dimensions are strung together with a single piece of stainless steel.Tensegrity describes a closed structural system composed of a set of three or more elongate compression struts within a network of tension tendons, the combined parts mutually supportive in such a way that the struts do not touch one another, but press outwardly against nodal points in the tension network to form a firm, triangulated, prestressed, tension and compression unit.

Methods to reduce heat gain

The use of wall cavities (as air cushions), thermal mass (thick walls), and external
reflective materials, such as whitewash or enameled ceramic tiles, can help prevent heat gains
on external walls. Thermal mass or inertia is also important to provide a stable indoor
environment, since the interior air temperature hardly changes. It helps maintain the
building’s interior cool during the day, the daily heat transfer being delayed for a couple of
hours.

Reduction of heat and moisture gains

If air temperature and RH are to be reduced indoors, some architectural features should be
highlighted. The positioning of the building with regard to the path of the sun, the prevailing
winds, and the driving rains, together with a good design and careful location for the
openings, can lead to improved zoning and distribution of rooms, according to their functions
and climatic requirements. A combination of shade and ventilation (either natural or
controlled) also plays a key role in the process.

Mechanical properties of glued laminated bamboo

Basing on the properties of Glued Laminated Bamboo Wood such as small deformation, stable dimensional, high density and high pressure, etc, this paper tries to expound the technique feasibility of this kind of building from such aspects: basic structures of building, basic construction, and technique difficulties in construction, etc. And the author considers this kind of building possess unique advantages.


http://www.ewpa.com/Archive/2008/june/Paper_112.pdf

Use of wind cones to cool a building

The optimized form of cones (also called wind cones) uses stack ventilation as well as the wind above the building to create a negative pressure at the top of the cones, which in turn creates air movement in the interior courtyard spaces at the base of the cone and draws cooler air up through the subterranean levels of the city below. At night, the wind cones reverse roles acting as inlet wind towers drawing cool night air downwards to cool the building structure.

These cones should ideally have a tapering form at the top with a wide base.

WORKS - PAPER TUBE STRUCTURES

http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/SBA_WORKS/SBA_PAPER/SBA_Paper_index.htm

Paper Tube Structure

http://park.org/Japan/DNP/MTN/SB/paper/paper1_e.html

Photosynthetic Breathing Building Skin

http://cleantechnica.com/2010/05/14/clever-photosynthetic-breathing-building-skin-to-cut-need-for-energy/

Design Strategy in Warm-humid Climates

What we have working against us?

1. In warm-humid climates, the nights are usually warm and there is very little diurnal variation (often less than 5 deg C).

2. Evaporative cooling will be neither effective nor desirable as it would increase the humidity.

3. In humid climates, moisture-laden air that entering an enclosure may contact elements below the dew point which can result in condensation within the enclosure, possibly leading to long-term moisture problems.

4. In a hot-humid climate, moisture will flow from outside to inside most of the year.

Design strategies…….

1. The designer should ensure that the indoor temperature does not become higher than the outdoor.

2. Adequate ventilation may ensure this by removing any excess heat input, but this is not enough.

3. Undue increase of ceiling temperature may be prevented by:

· using a reflective roof surface

· having a separate ceiling

· ensuring adequate ventilation of the attic space

· using reflective surfaces both for the underside of the roof and for the top of the ceiling

· using some resistive insulation for or on the ceiling

4. The whole building should be lightweight to allow rapid cooling down at night.

5. East and west walls should have minimum or no windows in order to exclude the low angle east and west sun.

6. They should be reflective and/or well insulated.

7. North and south walls should be as open as possible, to allow for cross ventilation.

8. This requires that the plan arrangement should avoid double-banked rooms.

9. Avoid obstruction of the wind.

10. The openings require protection from the sun and driving rain but also from mosquitoes and other insects which abound in these climates.

11. At times orientation for wind and for sun give conflicting requirements, solar orientation should take precedence, as there are ways of deflecting wind, but no ways of altering the sun’s movement.

12. This indicates that the most important issue in ventilation and window placement is that the path of moving air be at the level of the occupants. Window openings should be roughly the same size on both windward and leeward sides, and should be placed across from one another at the level of the occupant.

Material Properties………..

1. In general, lighter colors and smoother surfaces lead to lower surface temperatures.

2. Low thermal mass construction is typical in regions with low diurnal range.

3. Slab on ground construction is useful for winter heat storage provided windows catch the winter sun; walls should be made of lightweight materials.