A Chinese architecture firm builds multi-story bamboo treehouses with no fasteners

In 2013, architects Dayong Sun and Chris Precht founded Penda, with the aim to reconnect people with our natural environment through their designs. Since then, the Beijing and Vienna-based architecture firm has become internationally renowned. Perhaps their most inspiring design is the Rising Canes, a structure made exclusively from bamboo and rope which was proposed in Beijing Design Week in 2015.

In its simplest form, the structure looks like a tent and can accommodate one family, but it can easily be expanded into a house or even a village to allow more inhabitants, with new bamboo canes being integrated into the construction. The final design of an urban structure that could house up to 20,000 people is what the company hopes to build by 2023. The bamboo used for the design of these multi-story treehouses is recycled and sourced from local areas and like many bamboo construction techniques, the floors of the building will be made of sliced rods laid side by side. “No nails or screws are used for the structure and all materials are 100% recyclable. Furthermore the Bamboo does not get drilled in the process. All joints are tied with ropes, which leaves the materials unharmed so they can be reused after the installation. We see our project strongly connected to the ‘Cradle to Cradle’ movement, which proposes a holistic economic, industrial and social framework that seeks to create systems which are not only self-sufficient, but also essentially waste-free.”, says architect and co-founder Chris Precht.