The bamboo buildings that sway in earthquakes

Bamboo culms (the upright, hollow stems) are lightweight, reducing the mass of a structure, and research shows that the ductility that allows them to withstand high winds also allows them to absorb seismic shock. "Buildings should move in an earthquake," says Sharma. "We just want to control how much they move."

A post-earthquake survey of over 1,200 buildings in Manabí found that overall, reinforced concrete buildings experienced greater levels of damage than timber and bamboo buildings, says Sebastian Kaminski, a structural engineer for UK-based construction consulting firm Arup, who was part of this mission. However, the trend was reversed in some towns, he notes, adding that post-earthquake data also needs to be taken with some caution. In this case, for example, it was collected several weeks after the event, when many buildings had already been demolished.

Today, a project launched in 2021 by Inbar and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation has built hundreds of new bamboo homes in Manabí, the Ecuadorian province where Manta is located. It has also taught some 200 students at the University of Manabí bamboo construction techniques, such as treating bamboo stalks and assembling panels.

It costs less than $20,000 (£14,900) to build a two-bedroom home, Jácome Estrella says – about the same as a house built with more conventional materials. "There is a phrase we use: it's the wood of the wise," he says of bamboo. "[It] is renewable, sustainable, with low impact to the market."

These new homes are inspired by a traditional building method called bahareque, known in English as wattle and daub, where a mesh of bamboo is covered with a layer of wet loam soil.