Bamboo House

The Bamboo House is a design/build project of Earth Shelter, a non-profit design/research organization that Daniel Glenn co-founded with Susan Atkinson in 1986 to research and promote sustainable development in Nicaragua. The project team provided design, tools, funding, and volunteer labor to build this bamboo-soil cement housing prototype as an alternative form of housing in a resource-limited and war-torn nation. The client for the project the theater cooperative Nixtayalero, based in a remote rainforest in the surrounding mountains.

The house was part of a larger effort to promote and demonstrate the use of bamboo as an alternative resource. David Farrelly, author of The Book of Bamboo, served as a resident expert in bamboo technology. The design derives from both the indigenous A-frame structures of the region and an earthquake-resistant housing prototype, developed by Colombian architect, Oscar Hidalgo. The A-frame form steps down the slope of the site, allowing for more light to enter the house. The project was completed in 1987 and utilized by the Nixtayalero theater cooperative as a house and theater library.