Empty Nesters on a Green Global Trek

Driven by the intense price competition to supply transitional shelters in Haiti, we have had to and have been successful in devising a simpler alternative for bamboo walls. CO2 Bambu’s technical manager has gone for some in depth training with Colombia’s famed bamboo architects and has come back with many valuable “tricks of the trade”. The container we are prepping not only includes some of CO2 Bambu’s low cost housing solutions and first school, but it also includes some pre-fabricated material kits of sustainable bamboo that can be affixed to steel or timber frames already on the ground in Haiti. My task this coming week will be to engage with a handful of NGOs and leverage our first customer orders to clinch or at least make some good progress toward capturing additional orders for bamboo material to harden temporary plastic shelters into semi-permanent dwellings.

Here the manufacturing team washes bamboo culms before they are cut to specific lengths and kitted for their maiden Haiti voyage.

Meanwhile, on the Nica front, the company is completing two small building projects, about to start on Peta’s studio, and, most interestingly, may be about to gain a solid reference in the region of Rosita, building a high visibility “Women’s Center”, for the Vice Mayor in charge of Indigenous Affairs. The design we submitted is shown below. It is an airy structure which, while one of a kind, will enable us to demonstrate locally the benefits of bamboo construction.