Exploring Bamboo Roof Design Ideas
This one was tough. For weeks, I struggled with various curved roof designs and structural elements. I had an image in my head — a kind of skirt, draped from a central column and flowing around the edges. But I couldn’t get it right. I built four or five models. Each one felt forced.
Letting Go of Perfection
What was I doing? More and more, I realised I didn’t know. What I did know was that I was trying to copy a Pablo Luna bamboo design, whose work I admire deeply. More than anything, I was chasing a curved form and avoiding the traditional rup-rup technique — where notches are cut into bamboo to allow it to bend — which I had tried but couldn’t master.
Discovering the Hypar Roof Form
Then I received the book Booming Bamboo by Jörg Stamm. Inside was a guide on how to build a hypar — a hyperbolic paraboloid. So I built one, just for the hell of it, following the book’s instructions.
A Vision Among the Rubber Trees
Not much of this was intuitive. It was more like playing around.
I had no idea where I was going. My original models were in the trash.
Anyway, then I was on the scooter one day, not-knowing what the hell I was doing, here on my winter base of Koh Lanta.
Then – I remember exactly where I found the design.
One afternoon I was riding my scooter past the build site, through a grid of rubber trees. And there, in the distance, framed by their long vertical trunks, I saw it — the hypar roof. That soft curve suspended in the geometric rigor of the plantation. It felt like a floating presence, light and mathematical, a poetic contrast to the mechanical world of the car beneath it. Suddenly, everything aligned. The hyperbolic paraboloid had found its place — not through logic, but through feeling. Through intuition.
That became the essence of the carport’s bamboo roof design.
The Challenge of Structural Support
Of course, the next question was how to support it.
My first attempts — attaching vertical bamboo posts directly to the hypar — failed. The poles cracked. The joints were unstable. I tried multiple solutions, even ran simulations with AI tools, but nothing felt reliable. Structurally, the system had too much play. Too much stress on individual points. I paused the project and went back to making furniture — a bamboo chair, a sofa. I needed space.
Bamboo U and the Power of Triangles
Then came Bali — and the Bamboo U course.
I didn’t go there to solve the carport. But walking through their structures — the kitchen roof, the bamboo dome — I kept noticing the same thing: elegant cross-bracing pyramids supporting vast spans. That was the missing link. My designs lacked triangulation, the core principle of structural stability in bamboo construction. One of the master carpenters at Bamboo U said it simply: “Triangles stabilise everything.”
Intuition, Craft, and the Hands-On Approach
And suddenly, it all made sense.
By embracing traditional cross-bracing techniques and letting the material speak, I could resolve the structural problems I’d been facing. This wasn’t just a technical breakthrough — it was a shift in approach. Real bamboo craftsmanship doesn’t always start in a 3D model. Sometimes it starts in the hands, on the back of a scooter, or under a canopy of trees. It starts with intuition, failure, and the patience to let the right idea emerge.
That’s the kind of bamboo architecture I believe in — rooted in feeling, and intuition.