Constructional continuity
For this, the team has written a business model for a future local company who forms a link in the whole chain of construction process. In the appendix you can read the whole business model, only a summary will be presented here.
Bamboo chain contains: chopping, handling and drying, constructing. The constructing part could be even more expanded; this is also the most difficult part. Not everyone is capable of building the parts (not even have a design background) and constructing the whole house (putting it all together). The team has therefore made a plan for a company that makes prefab construction components. The people could then construct the house there selves and aren’t dependent of governmental organizations. This model can therefore dodge corruption, which is a negative character (particularism) of cultural dimensions (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 2010).
The company buys bamboo from the farmers and treaters. They own different designs for bamboo houses, bigger ones and smaller ones. The smaller ones are also possible to expand. The company could not make too much of the prefab elements for the big or smaller house, these two models contain the same construction parts. IKEA© is a great example of this. Therefore up scaling will make the construction elements cheaper, less material is lost and less working hours are needed.
Additional services could be: the construction service and financial service. Even though the construction process is simplified, it could still be too difficult. Employees of the company could build the house for the family. It’s also common that the family isn’t able to pay the whole house in one time. The company therefore has this financial service. People could lease the prefab parts (this also means that while leasing, the family has warranty on the elements).
Aside from the main goal, setting up a prefab bamboo company in order to continue the bamboo housing construction, this model has also some positive side effects: create more jobs for the people, contributing to bamboo research and contribute to a more sustainable environment.
To start this company, the foundation does need a big amount of money to finance the first phase (lending people money to build their houses). This will be earned back later on.
During our project we’ll investigate what the possibility for these companies is. This will be implemented in the recommendation report.
Design and R&D continuity
As explained before, students who’ll become architects and engineers are the designers and builders of the future. When good education is provided, they are able to build a better world. Of course this knowledge has to connect to what’s best for the country. Based on this project, Bambú Social thinks that bamboo as a building material could fit perfectly in the Nicaraguan construction standard. Unfortunately there aren’t any courses about bamboo at the UCA (yet). There are projects about bamboo, and some professional architects are specialized in bamboo structures.
By organizing brainstorms and design cases, the team hopes that bamboo becomes hot-topic again. By involving staff and teachers, we want to show how and what bamboo can contribute to the housing in Nicaragua. Therefore students have to get education about bamboo and not only concrete and steel.
When this is implemented in the main curriculum of architecture (or civil engineering), future architects and engineers would use bamboo more often. Even so, standard designs for social houses, that are now built by the government and unfortunately are built of concrete and steel, would become bamboo. So not only the local people will use this material, but it becomes a country’s standard to live in bamboo houses.
In the previous project and our project, the first steps are made by organizing meetings together with the Universidad CentralAmérica.
Now these two parts of continuation have been discussed. One provides the up scaling and the other one the upgrading. To be sure that this continuation and knowledge is transferred well, so that the next groups are on the same line with the ‘bigger project’, the steps and conclusions has to be documented well. Therefore the team will write an internal recommendation report for Bambú Social foundation.
- Write an recommendation report for Bambú Social week 12