Local Inventor bends bamboo for Revolution
November 30, 2005 | Planet Jackson Hole Weekly
By Lauren Whaley [please visit her site: http://thesnaz.com/ ]
Joshua Doolittle, artist-cum-inventor, can barely
speak fast enough to spit out his bazillion ideas. His
sage-colored eyes brighten as he spins them off -
green building design, climbing areas, emergency
shelters, technical clothes, and his newest idea:
"Chi'Bagoda" bamboo architecture.
Combining technical training with a strong environmental
ethic, the Rhode Island School of Design
alumnus and Colorado native says bamboo presents
a viable solution to preserving natural resources. He
calls bamboo the "ultimate renaissance material"
that can save the environment and help the needy,
promoting cheap, sustainable living. Doolittle's plan
involves creating structures that "salvage our global
environment," he said.
Bamboo tends to crack when harvested, which is
actually a good thing. Breaking the bamboo poles
down into strips creates a stable structural element.
Doolittle says these strips can then be banded or laminated
to create the structural elements of whatever
you are wishing to build: a five-story urban building
in Sao Paulo, Brazil, or a 100-foot diameter, solar powered
greenhouse dome to provide a consistent climate
for drought-stricken Africans.
The circular "Chi'Bagoda" domes at the center of
his plan begin with composite bamboo ribs attached
to a central hub. The mushroom form is constructed
of composite bamboo strip bundles and structural
supports. The frame is then sheathed with a layer of
woven bamboo mats, followed by a concrete or adobe
stucco skin. Passive solar systems can then supplement
standard plumbing and electrical systems.
Although he dreams of spreading the idea worldwide,
Doolittle first hopes to build a prototype
through Bamboo Technologies' facility in Vietnam.
The bamboo shoot
According to http://www.bamboocentral.net/ , bamboo is the
fastest growing plant on Earth. It produces greater
biomass and 30 percent more oxygen than a hardwood
forest on the same area, while improving
watersheds, preventing erosion, restoring soil, providing
sweet edible shoots and removing toxins
from contaminated soil.
Bamboo timber can be harvested every
year after seven years, compared to 30 to
50 years for trees. It can also be selectively
harvested annually and regenerates without
replanting.
With a tensile strength comparable to
steel and a weight-to-strength ratio surpassing
that of graphite, bamboo is the
strongest woody plant on Earth. Its 1,500
species thrive in diverse terrain from sea
level to 12,000 feet on every continent but
the poles.
"The bamboo grove is a giant rebar factory,"
Doolittle said, explaining how
durable yet cheap the natural material is.
Doolittle said Vietnam has about
200,000 square miles of bamboo forests.
Bamboo feeds people, houses them, and
provides raw materials for utensils,
weapons, baskets, ropes, hats and many
other practical and spiritual uses.
"It's clear that this idea has been successfully
implemented in various forms,"
he said. "The Mesopotamians built
Quonset huts like tea houses, using a
banded swamp reed technique to form
giant structural hoops. Many Iraqi buildings [like
this] have been standing for 3,000 to 5,000 years.
The South Iraqis of today still build using this
system."
The bamboo frame system remains pervasive
throughout Asia and Polynesia. Despite how widespread
they are, however, bamboo dwellings are
looked down upon in many societies.
"The trend with bamboo homeowners throughout
the world is to rebuild with lumber or cinder
blocks once they can afford to do so," Doolittle
explained. "They do this, because ... they want to
rise above the negative stigma of living in an abode
built with the ‘poor man's building material."
This western trend, Doolittle said, is non-sustainable
and will ultimately lead to further destruction.
With his Chi'Bagoda project, then, Doolittle is
doing more than simply building. He's proposing a
paradigm shift into what he calls "future primitive,"
a movement that allows modern people to simplify
their lives and reconnect to their landscape.
Start of a dream
As a teenager, Doolittle worked on construction
crews in Colorado with climbers who waxed eloquent
on environmental decimation. While in
Colorado, he dreamed Eldorado Canyon was inhabited
by a colony of circular dome huts. Chi'Bagoda is
a manifestation of that dream.
I am also into Buddhism, Taoism and Eastern
philosophy," Doolittle said. "The pagoda is a
Buddhist temple that generally has a stacked arch."
In addition, Doolittle has been studying a 3,000-
year-old form of Tai Chi for the past eight years.
"So ‘Chi'Bagoda' is a fusion of ‘Chi' and ‘pagoda,'
but Chi'Bagoda has a better ring to it than
Chi'Pagoda."
Bamboo itself represents
the dichotomy of
wealth and nothingness.
It is also quick growing,
high, straight and very
strong, qualities that
present not only a high quality
building material,
but also something spiritual
in traditional Chinese
culture, something that
symbolizes positive
human qualities.
Seeking advice, ideas
and funding, Doolittle
has tapped resources in
Burlington, Vt., Boulder,
Colo., Ventura, Calif., Portland, Ore.,
Maui, Hawaii, Providence, R.I., and
now Vietnam and Saigon.
With the help of many people -
his primary teammates are Zak
Rosser, whom he met at the Brew
Pub one night, and Mike Gestwick,
whom he met during an "afternoon
art adventure" around Moran, but
aid has come from RISD professors,
Vietnamese bamboo farmers, his Tai
Chi instructor Greg Brazelton, and
Teresa Griswold and Steve Crafts
who did some graphic design work
for the project - Doolittle has created
a "patentable building material
that is an organic, sustainable
expression of steel rebar, but much
easier and lighter to work with since
you can use standard carpentry tools
and fasteners," he said.
The Chi'Bagoda design recently
won an honorable mention in the sustainable
development Pangaea
Institute Design Competition and was
included in "Emergent: New Directions
in Sustainable Art and Design," hosted
by Doolittle's alma mater.
"The competitions are really getting
this project moving," Doolittle said.
Gimme shelter
In addition to building homes and
offices, Doolittle hopes the Chi'Bagoda
design can be used for emergency shelters.
These lighter, fabric-skinned
domes could be mass produced.
They could be shipped to disaster
areas to be used as temporary but
long-term emergency housing, storage,
clinics, meal areas, etc.," he said.
"The bamboo Chi'Bagoda
would not only provide a
more affordable, sustainable
and culturally appropriate
response to the
housing crisis, but also a
structural system that
has proven to be highly
earthquake resistant."
He claims that bamboo
structures in
Columbia and Costa Rica
have survived 7.2 and
7.5 magnitude earthquakes
while surrounding
cinderblock dwellings
collapsed.
"The bottom line is
that with some tinkering,
we should be able to
build just about anything,
but the one optimal theme is to incorporate
arcs to gain the added structural
integrity that occurs when material
is put in tension," he said. "This is the
same premise behind dome tents."
Inventing a future
After researching, drawing and
talking to as many people as possible
for about eight months, Doolittle estimates
his full-scale prototype will cost
$8,000.
"We're pretty confident this is
going to work," he said. "This could
turn into developments all over the
world, for the Indonesian fisherman
to upscale Jacksonites and everything
in between."
Eventually, after building his prototype
in Asia, Doolittle hopes to gain
access to Vietnamese and Venezuelan
bamboo groves and turn Chi'Bagoda
into a business.
"The Chi'Bagoda vision is to also
operate a nonprofit division that
would be busy promoting and teaching
this idea in the economically
emerging nations of the world, many
of which already have abundant bamboo
sources," he said. "This is
extremely crucial if our planet is going
to survive, and us with it."
Moving a mile a minute, designing
and pontificating, telling anyone who
will listen, this local inventor continues
to spin. If you see someone scribbling
furiously in Pearl Street Bagels or
the library, it is likely Josh Doolittle
planning his next project or scheming
ways to come up with the money to
see his dreams turn into reality.
[Corrections: Not a native of Colorado, was
born in Rochester, NY 6/8/72 and there's
never been a conversation on a construction
site that I can recall ever qualifying as
"waxed eloquent". I did, however, work
for an extremely kind, wise and generous
stone mason for a few weeks in Boulder, CO,
Fall '01, that involved interesting
conversations about past lives.]
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