Bamboo Structure Project designed by Pouya Khazaeli Parsa, This project is dedicated to a student of mine who didn?t know how to create a dome! The student in question was tasked with producing a model of the Sultaniya dome. He set about cutting 3mm strips of foam and bending each strip into a semi-circle, rotating and joining them by their tips. It was not until he had installed nearly one-third of the semi-circles that he realized the strips were far too thick to create a dome. He wanted to completely change his method of construction, but to me, he was creating a wonderful method of sheltering far more interesting than a conventional dome, so beautiful and very simple. I asked him to complete the model with the same method and, as I had anticipated, the result was quite amazing.
Two years later when I was approached by Mr. Mirdamad, who was looking for a novel model of construction for the development of a resort town near the forests of Katalom in northern Iran, the method returned to me.

I decided to use bamboo as there is plenty of it the region making it cheap and easy to gather sufficient materials. We used seventy bamboos in our realized model, with two bamboos completing a curve from one side to the other side of the project. The bamboo was cut two days prior to use. This ensured it was still soft and flexible during construction and would subsequently become rigid once built. It is, however, possible to keep the bamboo alive after construction and thus ensure t...