On an agricultural plot on the edge of the Coconi road, only the roar of the drills breaks the silence. Under the exhausting heat of this early morning, a team is focused to fix nails on a frame. It will cover the workshop where the Mayotte bamboo will be treated and dried and is of course made of this material. “” It will be a prefabrication workshop for bamboo frame »shows the Reunion architect Thibaut Fung Kwok China.
In the aftermath of the Chido cyclone who devastated Mayotte, the Reunion architect Thibaut Fung Kwok China, who visits, and Louis Dossal, the co-manager of the Lilo Bambou company, immediately thought of using this material to rebuild . “It is very present on the island, about 1 % of the territory is covered by bamboo bouquets, so the resource is there and it must be exploited”is convinced Louis Dossal.
Bamboo, a very resistant material
With Thibaut Fung Kwok China, he provides construction training from fiber at the Coconi agricultural high school. A session was scheduled for December 16, it was without counting the cyclone which struck two days earlier. “The high school was decimated and 90 % of its greenhouses intended for the market gardening fell to the ground. We said to ourselves that we could rebuild them in bamboo so that production leaves quickly ”tells the one who comes from the agricultural world. Otherwise, it would have been necessary to import them from a metropolis … or “a period of at least six months”, notes Louis Dossal.
Nicknamed “green steel”, bamboo is a very resistant material provided that it is put in place correctly. “The mechanical tests done by the School of Higher Engineers Reunion Indian Ocean on the common bamboo, the most present species in Mayotte, have shown extraordinary mechanical resistance”says Louis Dossal.
A still embryonic sector
Since the disaster, the company has been in great demand for construction sites. The interest in the material has been increased tenfold because “ The cyclone and the fact of being cut off from the world make the importance of having resources on site ”, he believes. The Reunionese Thibaut Fung Kwok China, manager of the Métiée Architecture company, shares this opinion.
-“In Reunion, as in other insularities, all buildings are made with imported materials, this induces a strong carbon footprint. Hence the desire to create local sectors that participate in the benefit of the planet and the development of a local economy ”. For him, Chido must be “A life lesson so that the territory improves its ability to resilient”.
The sector in the archipelago is still embryonic. Despite the momentum that accompanies its development, its use in architecture today meets important resistance. “In France, it is not supervised, there is no professional rule, it is therefore difficult to ensure buildings”explains Julien Beller, architect installed in Mayotte.
For the time being, it is therefore essentially secondary modules that are made such as fences, faresses, bastings. The professional designed the building of the former Mamoudzou court – whose roof was swept away by Chido – with a bamboo frame. For this, he had to use an ATEX (a technical assessment of appreciation), a long and costly administrative approach.
The use of bamboo also meets important cultural brakes. “In Mayotte, he is perceived as a material of the past, modernity here, is concrete”he regrets. Even if in mentalities, concrete still has a bright future ahead of him, Julien Beller is determined to continue to use the resource. One of its next sites concern temporary bamboo housing in Doujani, a village in Mamoudzou, which will be set up within the framework of the resorption of insanitary housing.
