Design and Construction of the World’s First Seven-Story Engineered Mass Bamboo Building: Ninghai Bamboo Tower

A seven-story engineered mass bamboo building has been designed and constructed in China, representing a pioneering example of biobased structural systems. The building utilizes prefabricated components made of engineered bamboo material: glued laminated bamboo (glubam) and cross-laminated bamboo and timber, developed in accordance with existing timber design codes and research studies. The structural system comprises glubam beam-column frames with steel or bamboo bracing along the transverse direction and engineered bamboo frames combined with lightweight wood-frame shear walls along the longitudinal direction to resist lateral loads. Vertical and lateral loads, including seismic and wind actions, were considered in the design. Experimental tests for lateral behaviors of shear walls and braced frames were performed using a multiusage structural test setup. Numerical models of the lateral-force-resisting components were parametrically defined using computational intelligence techniques. A hybrid balloon-and-platform framing method was adopted to allow for rapid modular assembly with approximately three days required to complete every two stories. The embodied carbon of the building was assessed showing merits of using bamboo. Serving as a long-term research platform, the building will be used to support future studies on the performance of engineered bamboo structures under various loading scenarios and habitability conditions.