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The Bamboo Pavilion in Italy
one step towards
a sustainable architecture

presentation given by EMISSIONIZERO 
(Valeria Chioetto & Neri Braulin)
at The VII World Bamboo Congress 
New Delhi (India) - Feb. 28 / March 4, 2004

Published on BAMBOO - The Magazine of the American Bamboo Society, Vol. 25, no 1-3, 2004

Abstract – Although the possibilities of using bamboo as a structural material are really amazing, bamboo is still largely ignored by building codes and legislations across many countries. Some of the implications for using bamboo as a building material are highlighted in this paper and are based on the construction process of the first permanent bamboo structure for public use in Vergiate (Varese, northern Italy) built by the Italian non-profit EMISSIONIZERO Association and completed in the summer of 2003.
Among all the aspects of this ambitious initiative, that consisted in a seires of learning-by-doing workshops that took place in Vergiate from September 2002 to June 2003, this paper focusses on the static performances of the bamboo pavilion.
In particular, the authors highlight the process followed to obtain the static suitability certification of the first permanent structure in Europe for public use made in bamboo and the related technical and scientific implications.

Forewords
So far, the pavilion built in Vergiate, a small municipality in Northern Italy, by our non-profit association EMISSIONIZERO is the first permanent public building entirely made of bamboo ever made in Europe. The intention of this pioneering initiative was to contribute to the building knowledge diffusion of bamboo as an extrordinary material for a sustainable development: the main purpose was to organize a series of learning-by-doing workshops  where partici- pants could learn from their own direct experience under the coaching of experts in bamboo building. 
At the same time we wanted to make the most of this challenging enterprise by building something that could remain and give evidence  of  what  can be  done with bamboo.

The task was not an easy one but finally, in the summer of 2002, the idea sparked the interest of the Municipality of Vergiate. The Council’s plans included the refurbishing of a site that was traditionally destinated to public summer outdoor events. The site, called Bosco delle Capre (the Goats’ forest), is located on the edge of a chestnut forest in the Ticino National Park. In July of the same year, EMISSIONIZERO and the City Council signed an agreement for the construction.

The Pavilion
The Pavilion in Vergiate was inspired by the “ZERI Bamboo Pavilion”, which was constructed for the Expo 2000 in Hanover, as a spectacular evidence of the ZERI principles. The Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI) Foundation aims to the promotion of an environmentally-friendly and equitable development, and strongly sustains the use of bamboo as an ecological material for buildings (www.zeri.org). The environmental reasons for encouraging a more intensive and geographically enlarged use of bamboo are related to its fast and dense growth and therefore to its high rate of fixation of CO2 offering an amazing potential contribution to the reduction of global warming. The structure built in Vergiate and inspired by a drawing of the Colombian Architect Simon Velez, who is famous around the world for his bamboo ZERI Pavilion covers an area of approximately 500 sq.m.  and is composed of

three bodies, the central one being almost seven meters high at the ridge while the two at its sides are one meter lower.
The distance between the pillars in the cross section is 10 meters. 
The structure is made by 15 portals at a modular distance of 2 meters each one of them sustained by three pillars per side, one vertical and two as buttress. All the 4 sides are open with no partition walls inside. The roof is made of Canadian tiles fixed on a timber layer.

The constructive process adopted can be defined as semi-prefabrication. The trusses were actually made on the ground, then lifted on scaffoldings, and finally joined together. The roof was made before fixing the pre-cut pillars to the trusses while the foundations in concrete were laid at the end. The junction technique employed fish-mouths with threaded bars and concrete inside the joints.