Joy Martinez-Onozawa & The Story Of Bamboo: Growing Strong As Steel

MANILA, Philippines – So, Joy would make bamboo stilts and her brothers would make bamboo guns to play with. They lived on a farm, in a bamboo bahay kubo that they constructed themselves.

“The more you work with bamboo, the more you learn,” says Onozawa – and she has been learning all her life. For example, she learned that you could not use modern nails on bamboo – you have to make wooden pegs, just like the indigenous techniques.

“We learned that out of necessity. And then it became fun. Then when I eventually went into architecture, I focused on the advocacy that you can build on what the land has to offer,” she says.

In its natural form, bamboo has the ability to cool the surrounding environment. It is able to lessen pollution by sucking in carbon dioxide.

“Bamboo gives off oxygen, just like other plants,” Onozawa explains – but it is unique in that it does not release carbon dioxide back into the environment. It purifies the air we breathe and can significantly improve indoor air quality. In fact, bamboo has the ability to sequester 21.10 pounds of carbon dioxide a year – and it is never released back into the earth. Bamboo can also aid in sewage treatment and in hindering soil erosion.

But Onozawa has set her sights on something bigger: utilizing the bamboo to its full capacity as an industry. “Can you imagine how big an industry it can be for the Philippines? We just need to know more and more how to use it,” she says.

Onozawa believes that, just as her family would grow the food that they would eat when she was younger, we can also grow the materials we need for building. The architect says, “Bamboo intrigues me because it has amazing and various uses,” pointing out that it can be used for flooring, walls, reinforcements, gates, doors, curtains – almost any part of a building.

“Bamboo is a type of grass, but with the characteristics of wood and steel,” Onozawa explains. The varieties that grow in the highlands of the country, says Onozawa, have twice the compression strength of concrete and roughly the same strength to weight ratio of steel. This makes them good for construction reinforcements, structural purposes and flooring. Around the world it has been used for scafolding and even bridges.

“Since it is a reed – a grass – it has the strength nine times more the equivalent of a solid beam.” Onozawa even put bamboo under the microscope to show how strong it is at the cellular level.

Wood is no match to bamboo when it comes to compression and tensile strength. Bamboo likewise wins the race against wood in terms of growth. Unlike wood which would take 10 to 20 years or more before reaching maturity, bamboo can be harvested in just three to five years.

“They are quick growing. You can literally go to the office and when you come back home, it’s already a meter high,” she adds. “Bamboo can be grown in temperate or tropical countries. In the Philippines we have 62 species, 21 are endemic,” highlighting another characteristic of the fast-growing grass that would entice businessmen.

At the recent Philippine Wood Forum and Expo, Onozawa endeavored to inspire attendees from the industry to consider selling treated bamboo commercially. The biggest challenge for green architects like Onozawa is that there is no distributor in the Philippines selling treated bamboo, unlike in Japan, China, or Korea where she says you can simply walk into a hardware store and readily purchase cut, dried and treated bamboo.

The lack of availability is a major reason why the use of bamboo in the country is not as common, despite the many benefits. “Here, if you want to work with bamboo, you have to harvest it yourself, cut it yourself and treat it yourself.”

This is exactly what Onozawa and her team did when they constructed Plantation Bay Resort in Cebu. It took them six months to prepare all the bamboo used in the resort.

“Can you imagine how tedious that could be? We need someone to just sell treated bamboo,” says Onozawa.

Another factor that discourages people from using bamboo is the misconception that the material is prone to termites or borers. This, Onozawa explains, is because of the wrong practices a supplier might make in harvesting and treating the bamboo.

“You cannot cut bamboo in the day time,” she says. “Photosynthesis is ongoing, so the carbohydrates that the borers and termites love is still in the pole.” Rather, one should cut bamboo at around midnight, she says – a time when the carbs have gone down and are no longer in the pole.

Onozawa treats her bamboo with an organic mix of chili peppers, Perla soap and borax. She uses tuba vinegar to densify the bamboo as well.

In Cebu she has been giving workshops for the past two years in partnership with the European Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Science and Technology. Participants learn the correct techniques for planting, harvesting and treating bamboo, as well as how to make their own nails, joints, walls, doors, foundation and more – all out of bamboo. “They will get to know, understand and accept bamboo as a material,” says Onozawa, who also teaches a design class at the Foundation University in Dumaguete.

“Everything about bamboo is curves, bends and angles,” she says about designing with bamboo in mind. “Do not try to make it square. Use it in its natural sense because that is where it is the strongest. And it is also where it is the most beautifully used.”

Onozawa’s influence has not just spread to her students. Back home – which is also made mostly of bamboo – her love for the material rubbed off on her son, Koh, who is the entrepreneur behind the innovative Loudbasstard bamboo speakers.

“For three months our house was so dusty while he and his partners were trying to perfect the design,” recalls the proud mother.

“We can be so proud of this,” says Onozawa of the budding bamboo industry that she hopes to nurture. Her most important task now is to educate more and more people on the benefits of using bamboo and to hopefully create more demand for the material. Passionate about bamboo, she is planning to come up with a book all about it soon.

From playing on her childhood stilts, Onozawa has come a long way in creating an even taller platform for bamboo, bringing it towards a future of growing possibilities.?