Bamboo: vegetable carbon fibre, climate solution and, a British crop. Neil Thomas of Atelier One asks what we can learn from nature’s 400-million-year head start in engineering.

Neil Thomas in the grounds of Bretforton Grange & Theatrebarn in Evesham,Worcestershire.

Nature is pretty good at engineering. It has been doing it for 400 million years.

We have been building in a way that produces 40% of all greenhouse gases, seriously exacerbating climate change. We have to fundamentally change the way we build. Wood is perfect, but we cannot rely on it alone.

When I returned from Bali 12 years ago, having seen bamboo and its possibilities, I told people we were going to build with bamboo. Some laughed. Bamboo??? A lot has changed in those 12 years. In 2022, AtelierOne won the IstructE award for Sustainability and went on to win the Supreme Award for the Green School Gymnasium in Bali.

Bamboo is a grass. When it is harvested it regrows and regrows, just like mowing the lawn. Unbelievably a single clump can grow up to five kilometres of culms in its lifetime. People have described bamboo as being akin to vegetable steel, but this is not true for bamboo or timber. They are closer to vegetable carbon fibre.

Antoni Gaudí said “This tree near my workshop. This is my teacher.” Trees have so much to teach us, but are still not fully understood. Timber is regularised in most of its uses. But the way to unlock the true capabilities of both bamboo and timber is to work with them in their natural form.

People ask “Does bamboo grow in the UK? What’s the carbon footprint of shipping from the tropics to the UK?” In recent years the answers have changed. Shockingly, due to the catastrophic global rise in temperature and sunshine, bamboo can grow prodigiously here in the UK.

Neil Thomas
Atelier One
London EC1

All photographs in the Reinventing Practice series will be on show at Regenerative Design 2026,  a month-long programme of exhibitions and events that takes place at the Building Centre throughout October 2026.