Wednesday, June 1, 2011

‘One-stop-Shop’ for bamboo houses; a Wonder Grass initiative

Wonder Grass is in the process of setting up first of its Sales-Hub, where the range of bamboo-based building products like Green-wall panels, Screens, modular Terrace-top structures and other add-on building-components would be on display and for purchase ‘off-the-shelve’.
 
Along with a set of purely bamboo-based building components, other related accessories, hardware and coating-paints etc will also be available. A team of artisans will be stationed on-site to provide installation and maintenance services, an architect for design-support service etc. In nut shell this place is conceived to provide anyone interested in building with bamboo ‘One-stop-Shop’ experience, to make building with bamboo a joy.

The place is a combination of various ‘front-end’ functions; marketing and design office, a demonstration structure, ‘Stock-and-Sell’ point and small-time building-workshop. Bangalore is a natural choice to start the first of our Sales-Hub outlet, as the people here have given a fillip to idea of using bamboo for building.

We have taken on rent an empty terrace in sector – I, HSR layout, where we are building the whole ‘office-cum-showroom’ using bamboo, demonstrating some of our standard building-systems and using various prefab building components like green-wall panels etc. This will leave no doubt in the mind of our clients and customers, as to how these building components perform and work in the real life-conditions.

This place will provide a very important ‘touch & feel’ aspect of the building product (for a client) to make a final call on using bamboo for his/her building-project.

The office-showroom built with bamboo will help us demonstrate the ability of bamboo for building day-to-day structures with no compromises on performance, its elegance, our ability to deliver a quality finished product, and that too in a short time-frame for erection on site. 

We started work on site around 7th of May. The building is coming along very nicely. The whole new idea of building a system-based bamboo structure is arousing a keen interest from passers-by, people in the vicinity and more importantly within a larger network of Wonder Grass. A lot of our friends have been visiting the set-up, giving ideas and suggestions. The small ideas here and there have helped us make this building that much richer in its form and content.


Meeta, an architect friend, suggested that why not explore and employ a curved / arched roof instead of a standard two-way sloping roof. The curvilinear forms are natural to bamboo, taking some clues from the amazing ‘Green School’ in Bali, we started working on the development of curved roofing system. Achieving a right curvature, required us to develop a new construction method. This helped stretch our imagination, sometimes appearing almost difficult to achieve in a limited time-frame, we had set for our ourselves.




We have finally managed to put together an arched roofing system, owing to untiring efforts by artisans Nikhil Shingare, Yogesh Tembhre and Vaibhav moon. The first arch came up fine, but kept us giving trouble as it was opening up on loading. It needed a tie-member at bottom to hold its curve / shape intact.

The walls are a composite type, it employs combination of different walling systems, using bamboo only. Like some parts are Bamboo-Mat boards, parts are half-split ‘Kavelu Panels’, Woven-mesh panels etc.


The work is progressing well, and we hope to meet our time-line in the midst of monsoon which has come visiting early this time.

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