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Bamboo Furniture Project

Name of OER/Project Developers: Emma Crichton and Jenny Ralston

Institution: Engineers Without Borders – U.K. (EWB-UK) and Vigyan Ashram

E mail: emma.crichton@ewb-uk.org or vapabal@gmail.com

Course: Rural Technology

Subject: Engineering

Prescribed syllabus: Unit: Bamboo Furniture

Content Outline

General PPT on bamboo as a material, history and context.

Detailed documentation of 2012 Vigyan Ashram Project

Bamboo and other subjects - Shilpa

Learning Objectives

Learner will be able to describe the need and opportunities for

bamboo construction and treatment.

Learner will be able to evaluate how appropriate techniques

used in bamboo construction are by analysing value added,

cost and other constraints.

Learner will be able to describe the process of bamboo

preservation, differentiate between and evaluate the

effectiveness of the traditional and chemical methods.

Learner will be able to explain the key steps in the design

process and apply this skill to the design of a bamboo chair.

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Introduction

This document contains details of how a project on bamboo construction was conducted at

Vigyan Ashram in 2012. It is intended that this may be a useful template for future projects

or anyone interested in conducting a course on bamboo furniture. It should be stressed that

any product would be suitable to use a design process for. This process is not unique to

bamboo furniture. This is not a step by step guide to doing this process as the context for

future projects may be completely different. However it is hoped that it will be a useful

resource for anyone investigating bamboo as a building material, using the design process to

teach as a useful or participating in an educational project.

It may be nice for students involved with the project to be encouraged to access files (if

online) or given CD with files.

This document may not be suitable to use an OER as is quite specific and contains a vast

amount of documentation (videos and pictures) of students at Vigyan Ashram.

See pictures, PPTs and references in folder for all sources of information used in this project.

A general PPT on bamboo construction has also been produced following this project.

Design Process used for this project:

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This process touched on a lot of the aspects of bamboo construction and treatment. Other

possible areas for expansion are shown in the below mind map.

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Detailed documentation of 2012 Vigyan

Ashram Project

In the week of 6th to 11th of August, two EWB-UK volunteers gave a presentation each

morning on bamboo to introduce the design process to the students and emphasis its

importance. The students were giving a brief to design a bamboo chair.

Stage 1: Introduction

Click Hear to See PPT: Stage 1 Introduction to design.

(Client set as EWB volunteer Jenny – may be more appropriate to change this if used in

another school)

See Video used: ‘Creative unique bamboo & earth building...’ though there are a lot of

videos on www.youtube.com (if you search Bamboo) to choose from.

On Tuesday the volunteers gave a presentation called ‘developing the client’s brief’ where

the students were encouraged to consider the brief in terms of: who, what, why, how, and

when. Jenny acted as client and students asked questions in order to develop their brief e.g

how many people need to be able to sit on your chair, what is the budget etc. In order to

emphasise the importance of design, several pictures of poor/ funny designs were shown.

Defining the project’s purpose, innovation, need for development and market research were

all touched upon. The students were set homework to sketch ideas.

Stage 2: Stakeholders and team roles

Click Hear to See PPT: Stage 2 Stakeholders and team roles

On Wednesday these sketches were reviewed – almost all students completed homework.

Some students had thought carefully about the task and several creative concepts were

presented. Some were excellent. On the whole students didn’t draw dimensions on their

drawings and some had issues with units (cm, inch, etc) and scales. On Wednesday the

presentation introduced the concept of ‘Stakeholders’ and their importance. Team work and

a simplified version of the Belbin roles were introduced to emphasise the importance of

having a diverse team. Students were then split into their four departments, told to choose a

chair person, and develop their designs as a group – producing one design for each group of

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around 10 students. The materials available is some scrap bamboo and materials bought for

low cost. Therefore this limitation created the need for large groups of students.

Stage 3: Materials

Click Hear to See PPT: Stage 3 Materials

Thursday we covered joints and bending of bamboo. A document called

CIBAM_BambooConstuctionManual (ref Practical Action or shelter library site) was printed

and given to each team as it details a huge number of joints and different techniques for

connections. Bending of bamboo is done with LPG Burner though is only effective on green

bamboo. Other techniques (learnt in their own villages) were used to bend larger bamboo.

Stage 4: Pre construction

Click Hear to See PPT: Stage 4 Pre Construction

The students presented their work on Thursday (Festival on 10th and 15th) as volunteers and

teachers were in Pune at workshop Friday – Tuesday. Emphasis was placed on prompting

questions to students of how they met the client’s brief. Two designs were selected and the

students are to produce a list of materials needed. Both selected groups were paired with

the unsuccessful department so there is now two groups: Home and Heath & Agriculture and

Engineering & Electrical

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Students were encouraged to plan the construction of their respective chairs by drawing out

scale drawings of the plan, side elevations and other relavent detail on the floor. They then

calculated how much bamboo they needed and the relavent sizes of bamboo they needed for

each part.

. PPT 5: Stage 5: Construction

Click Hear to see PPT 5: Construction

Construction of the two designs took place and the students presented their final designs on

Friday. There is a lot of photos and videos documenting both team’s progress

Stage 6: Presentation

The presentation itself involved a 20mins presentation from EWB volunteers reviewing the

process and how the teams worked together. Each group then presented their chair with a

PPT they had created. Most instructors were present and quizzed each group on their design.

There is a video of this. The instructors and EWB volunteers (and Ama) set a criteria for the

design and rated which design was best in each categories. Categories ranged from

‘innovation’ and ‘strength’ to ‘cost’. Group 1 was then chosen as the winning team.

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Winning group.

Stage 7: Evaluation and Costing

Market selling: Following the presentations the students were told to calculate the cost of

construction of each chair. One chair is to be marketed at 1,100 rupees, the other at 900.

The chairs were then carried down to the local market. There was a lot of response from

locals and a real buzz around the chairs. The students marketed their chairs and were very

enthusiastic about this process. The EWB volunteers set strict instructions that the chairs

themselves were not to be sold. Instead the students can obtain orders for the chair or other

bamboo products. The chairs are to be viewed as a prototype which displays the quality of

design the students can produce and their technical skills. The students noted down

interested customers, their requirments and their phone numbers. Orders for dinning tables,

chairs and in particular one order for 5,000 rupees for 4 chairs are currently being discussed.

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Group 1 managed to collect 43 names and numbers of people potentially interested in

placing an order. Group 2 lost their list!

One group really did not work well as a team. The other group worked really well together. It

was actually quite a good comparative and I think the students realised this though

obviously we did not state this at any point.

The whole process was a success. We held a feedback session where students were asked to

rate the whole project by thumbs up if they enjoyed it, middle if not sure and down if they

found it boring. 21 students had their hands up, 6 neutral and one down (though around 10

students missing from this session). When asked why they were neutral or down they

suggested:

- Too many people in group (due to materials shortage students were split into two

groups of around 20)

- When agriculture group formed a group with Home & Health they didn’t ‘back the

design’ as their design had not been chosen.

- Too much pressure from other students.

- Long hours (some students worked till 3am)

- Teamwork (some students had never worked in a team before and struggled with

this)

- Only choose students to work on project who are enthusiastic about it

- Lack of tools and equipment

Students gave feedback on things they had learnt through process:

- Leadership

- Teamwork, one group said that 11/20 students really worked well together.

- They learnt to divide the work into groups (management)

- How to plan and the importance of good planning

- That adding to each others ideas creates a better design.

- Being team leader is a big responsibility

Group 2’s chair (now used to provide

visitors with extra seating when they are

talking to Anand at his desk)

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Feedback session

Stage 8: Future Work

We asked the students how many would want to take this project on in the long term (each

student is to have several projects during their time on DRBT course) and 19 students

wanted to continue it by working to orders placed.

Students should be encouraged to participate in design process of any project. Continue to

emphasise the importance of teamwork and design in future projects. Perhaps implement

more exercises for students to work on team working skills.

Try to work in smaller group and change the group leader daily.

In order for this process to be used in IBT schools perhaps a small scale product could be

developed as the IBT schools only run these sessions one day a week.