Non-profit Base Bahay Foundation Inc. has established a bamboo laboratory in the Philippines focused on alternative building materials, especially for the social housing sector.
Base Innovation Center (BIC) opened at the start of the year in Manila as the research and development arm of Base Bahay, to ensure continuous testing and knowledge improvement on the overall application of the foundation’s Cement Bamboo Frame technology.
A huge chunk of the research that BIC does involves testing bamboo to evaluate its mechanical properties, according Luis Felipe López, BIC director. Knowing this allows local authorities to have design values for bamboo that permits the creation of a national building code for bamboo, which could be used by structural engineers to determine the design of the housing structure that will be built using Base Bahay’s Cement Bamboo Frame.
Currently, the foundation partners with like-minded organizations such as Habitat for Humanity to build sustainable communities with affordable housing across the Philippines. So far, they have established 12 such communities, which house and provide livelihood to around 1,000 families, or more than 5,000 individuals.
