Bamboo making inroads to design and building elements

       Its special properties have made it a mainstay of craftsmanship in Asia for millennia. Comparable with steel in terms of tensile strength — the amount of force it can withstand before it breaks — bamboo is also limber enough to be split into strips, woven into baskets and strapped to the backs of farmers at harvest time. In China it is used to make everything from chopsticks to flutes.

       Perhaps due to this ubiquity, designers have disregarded bamboo as a cheap, disposable material. In recent years, though, attitudes have been changing. Economical and sustainable due to its rapid regenerative properties, interior, product and industrial designers are embracing bamboo as an alternative to heavily processed materials that can lack a connection to nature.