Abstract :
[en] The present study consists of trying to understand what the bamboo has to offer as well as what its limits are. The location was chosen in Bali, Indonesia, because it is currently a place where we can find a high concentration of bamboo craftsmanship and bamboo factories. The material is locally available and a couple of emblematic buildings are located there.
Bamboo does not seem to be used much by the local Balinese population as a traditional construction material for housing. This master thesis confirms this statement and answers non-exhaustively why.
Furthermore, it seeks to evaluate the perception Balinese people have of bamboo construction, particularly for housing. In order to do so, we establish qualitative indicators as guidelines for the evaluation of the perception of bamboo housing.
The methods we choose to learn about the Balinese people’s perception are the questionnaire survey, the in-depth interview and the commented walk.
The first one, the 24-question-survey, targeted a large public and got 57 participants. It collects data on the common materials used in Bali, the ideal material participants would choose for a new building and then evaluated the perception of bamboo under various angles.
The second method, the in-depth interview targets two small samples: 3 expert actors in bamboo construction, each one in their own way, and a sample of 4 various chosen profiles for an a priori experiment.
The expert sample includes a bamboo structural engineer, a bamboo architect and a bamboo house owner. Each one of them brings an overview of their domain regarding bamboo. This work also benefits of another bamboo expert’s opinion: Elora Hardy agreed that we include one of her speeches in the present study. Thus she broaden the results with her experience.
The last method, the commented walk, is an ethnological approach consisting of collecting the users’ on-site comments. It aims to capture aspects of the sensory perception. It was conducted with the same sample as the in-depth interview a priori of the 4 chosen participants. This method was implemented in order to retrieve some sensory perception indicators from the participants.
The following indicators came out of these experiments: the sociocultural context, perceived costs of a bamboo building, perceived lifespan of a bamboo building, perceived safety and flammability of a bamboo building, local availability of the material, perceived sustainability of the material, sensory perception in bamboo spaces, maintenance of bamboo buildings, lack of airtightness, and finally creativity, beauty and originality created by the use of bamboo.
Each of these indicators brought up an aspect of how bamboo is perceived and whether or not it is accepted as suitable for housing.
This master thesis could be used as a ground of reflexion for architects or administration members wishing to support bamboo projects in tropical regions.
