Development of a decision support system for bamboo building design

Bamboo, the fastest growing woody plant, is used as a common building material in bamboo-growing countries and recently also in non-bamboo-growing countries. In spite of this fact, building designers or users of a building have problems using bamboo as a building material since they lack information and guidance in how to use bamboo. This paper proposes a decision support system (DSS) that might be useful for designers when they design a bamboo building. It presents an early-stage design process of bamboo building and the development of a DSS. The architecture of this system is based on the theory of DSS and knowledge of bamboo that should be integrated in the design process of bamboo building. So there are three components: a DSS, design process, and knowledge of bamboo. The process starts with determination of the building system, database construction of bamboo building parts, and the rule for using bamboo in each building part. The process focuses on systematisation of each design stage and integration of the building parts to construct a monolith bamboo building. The purpose of systematisation is to offer designers a means of categorising problem solving during the design process in terms of, for example, assumption, criteria, alternatives, and acceptable solutions.