Tropical developing economies are some of the most vulnerable societies to natural disasters and by 2050, some 50% of the world’s population will live in the tropics. Over one quarter of the urban population of South East Asian tropical developing economies reside in non-adequate housing. The UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11), targets by 2030 the access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing, and suggests that the building of  sustainable and resilient buildings utilising local materials should be a catalyst for development. Cement production is the third-largest source of anthropogenic emissions of CO₂ and could rise by 23% by 2050 given current trends. Sand for construction is also being unsustainably sourced which in the coming decades will affect the concrete supply chain. We need to look at new sustainable, locally available natural materials for construction, and architects will need to respond to this challenge and develop new processes to work with natural materials which ensure structural integrity and affordability. Tropical developing economies are large producers of bamboo, a material with good tensile and compressive properties and a low carbon footprint when sourced locally. Bamboo can be worked with simple tools and can be grown locally on a village scale or even a family scale. Bamboo can also absorb CO₂ and stabilise slopes to tackle the effects of deforestation. If we are to increase the use of renewable materials, then we should look to non-or marginally-engineered building materials to ensure that the most affordable form of bamboo, ‘full culm bamboo’, (also named ‘round bamboo’) is used.

One major barrier to the use of full-culm bamboo in widespread construction is the notion of bamboo as the ‘poor man’s timber’. This attitude was clearly documented by INBAR in the Proceedings of Bamboo housing workshop in an in Ghana in 2003. The document opens with: “Bamboo has a long history as a building material in many parts of the world. It is light, strong and easy to grow. In spite of these advantages, it is widely perceived as a temporary, poor man’s material. However, with careful specification and design, safe, secure and durable bamboo shelter is achievable at a price that is within reach of even the poorest communities in developing countries.”

An article in Structural Engineer in 2013, titled: Engineered bamboo houses for low income communities Latin America, opens with a similar sentiment and states: “Bamboo has been used for thousands of years for housing in many areas of the world because of its strength, availability, fast growth and low cost, however durability has demoted its modern position to a poor man’s building material.”

In a 2019 interview, the Colombian architect Simon Velez was asked whether there is a political element to working with bamboo. In his reply, Simon Velez agreed with this stating: “I don’t understand why, but there is. Because the academic world here [Colombia] hates bamboo; It’s the poor people’s wood. They really hate that kind of alternative material. There is a big prejudice against those natural materials, because they have the meaning of poverty. Since we are a poor country, they decided we have to show the world that we are a civilized country, and that we use concrete; we use brick; we have steel; and we have glass. I’m not an enemy of those materials, but there are many other materials”.

A quantification of societies’ perception of bamboo as the ‘poor man’s timber’ is lacking. The objective of these interviews is to begin to understand and quantify the perception of bamboo in societies which could benefit from bamboo’s widespread use in construction. This can give architects the information to address these concerns and design for the use of materials such as bamboo in a way which engages societal attitudes, and deliver, through inclusive and community participatory design practices, adequate housing for urban areas, which is functional and aesthetically pleasing for residents to democratically choose.