The challenge

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

My role

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

Research Journal

June 2026

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

Joint Development #1

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.

Drilling dead centre through Bamboo

To fit the 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.

Joint Development #2

The female connector of the system interupted one axis, so we removed the female, instead bolting directly through the bamboo, ensuring the bolt hole is directly behind a node to increase structural capacity.