I first ran across a bamboo frame by Brano Meres, an engineer and industrial designer based in Bratislava, Slovakia. You can see quite clearly how the bamboo is used as tubing. He’s gone even further, apparently, and more recently created a frame from woven bamboo. This frame’s construction is similar in concept to carbon fiber, except it uses bamboo fibers.
Another manufacturer is Calfee Design, which goes so far as to even integrate hemp in the lugs (the bits that hold the tubes together). Again, some very nice, high-end bikes which gain vibration dampening from the inherent material characteristics of the bamboo.
And I was surprised to find an extreme example of a bicycle made from bamboo that’s being promoted as a sustainable transportation method in parts of Africa. (Craig Calfee also made a trip to Ghana in February.) Not as aesthetically refined, but at the end of the day you just want something to get you from point A to point B.
So this is the other extreme of bamboo, that of a critical functional role that also happens to produce some very nice aesthetics.
In recognizing these functional elements of bamboo, I can’t help but wish that manufacturers like Asus would take advantage of the material in ways which move beyond simply using it as a disposable covering. I’m not proposing to make semiconductors out of bamboo, but I do wonder what might happen were bamboo (or some other material) to truly permeate throughout our electronics. Could your iPhone give you splinters? Would our monitors swell and shrink based on the seasons? Would our laptops develop a warm patina from frequent use?
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