The challenge

Developing one of the UK’s earliest permanent structural bamboo buildings.

My role

Project manager, prototyping, fabrication, documentation and site construction.

Notebook

June 2026

Developing structural bamboo systems for the Wildheart Animal Sanctuary, Isle of Wight.

Technical:

Joint Development

How do you create a bamboo connection that is both structurally reliable and visually coherent?

Working with the Node Company, we’re pioneering a new connector system that allows bamboo to be constructed in geometrically consistent modular form with almost infinite variability.

Process:

Drilling dead centre through Bamboo

To fit the bamboo connectors (above), a bolt needs to pass through the exact centre of the bamboo cylinder. Aligning this drilling angle is difficult by hand.

To get around this issue, I developed a simple jig using a semi-circle of bamboo. The semi-circle cradles the curve of the bamboo, and the exact centre of the semi-circle reflects the exact centre of the complete culm.

Process:

Cracking

During prototyping, cracks appeared in the bamboo as the drill bit entered. We had been using auger drill bit which pushes the bamboo apart as it enters. Consequently we switched to using brad drill bit. The brad has two flutes which mean more cutting and less pushing. We also switched to drilling in a vice, rather than held by hand. When the bamboo is tightly held it’s less likely to crack.

Technical:

Drilling bolt holes behind nodes

Bamboo nodes are the circular diaphragms that rise vertically up the bamboo. Since the nodes are much more dense than the rest of the bamboo, they are ideal for holding loads. Bolt holes drilled away from the nodes are more likely to split longitudinally. So it pays dividends to drill bolt holes near the node crests, particularly at the ends of the bamboo beams.