Instagram story viewer> @bambulawan> Tagged

Bambulawan

@bambulawan

211

followers

54

following

Bamboo architecture + culture + craft studio
🌿 Burauen, Leyte, PH/ Brooklyn, NY
🌏 Dreaming ancestral futures into being

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Hayahay ha kawayan! 🎋 Super special to visit dear @architate in Burauen, Leyte (& meet @faithfrancesluna!) to experience the budding building of @bambulawan reviving her ancestral land 💚

Fit with a breezy two-story bamboo payag (chill shack), fresh mountain spring water 😍💧, a natural pond, lots of shade, animals, edible pako greens, & coconut trees 🌴 BLESSED 🙏🏽 added some snapshots of sunrise yoga practice, pond swim & feeling thyself selfies to evoke the vibe 😌

I also got to witness @bambulawan in action for @dti.leyte’s Arki Expo in the middle of Robinsons Mall in Tacloban City! Elevating the largely untapped potential for native bamboo to redesign & architect our ecologically rooted futures.

There’s so much to grieve with the land amidst climate change, political corruption & urban migration, but it’s initiatives like this that give me hope, that when we literally invest in our native ecologies, ancestral heritage & indigenous wisdom, that we unleash the unmeasurable abundance that capitalism can’t even quantify (let alone steal from!)!

Each bamboo prototype come to life is an experiment, a lesson, a proof of concept, an emergent legacy. Beyond grateful to be working with @bambulawan for an emerging land stewardship project in Bantayan 🙏🏽 Definitely reach out to them if the ethos of native bamboo building & creative ecodesign aligns with your vision, especially if based in Eastern Visayas 💚

#bambooph #bamboo #nativebuilding #leyte #visayas

205

13

Last Sunday we explored Design Playgrounds for Future Ancestors with Kimberly Tate. We journeyed into our childhoods with an assortment of milk crates, batik clothes, and art supplies as we considered what types of playgrounds we might want to design.

Just three more Sundays left! Join us through the link in our bio!

32

3

From growing bamboo to restore soil health and biodiversity to engineering it into a scalable building material to designing entire structures around its natural intelligence, From Field to Form: Bamboo brought together three leaders who are shaping what this plant can mean for the future of healthy building.

Regenerative agroforester Lucas Oshun of @regenerationfieldinstitute shared how bamboo cultivation can restore biodiversity, support rural livelihoods, and supply a fast-growing, locally available material - while reminding us that yield and performance depend heavily on place, conditions, and continued R&D investment.

Material innovator Jonas Hauptman of @vt_biodesign explored bamboo’s potential to address the global housing crisis. The regions that need housing most are the same regions where bamboo thrives. If supported by industry and infrastructure, bamboo can become a versatile system of parts capable of scaling.

Designer Elora Hardy of @ibukubali offered a window into material-led practice in Bali and beyond, where bamboo is treated as a collaborator rather than a commodity. Her approach embraces curved geometries, site-responsive design, hand sketches, and the idea that “there is nothing wrong with a right angle - it just has to prove its relevance like any other shape.”

Guests also explored a curated exhibit by @jessicathiesdesigns of HML, with tactile materials and models - including contributions from @architate Kimberly Tate’s work at @bambulawan - that invited attendees to see, smell, and experience bamboo’s wide-ranging possibilities.

Thank you to our speakers, moderators Paul Lewis of @ltlarchitects and @jonsara of HML, collaborator @archleague, and everyone who joined us for an energizing, full-room conversation.

🔗 The event recording will be available soon! Request on-demand access through the link in our bio, and we’ll send it as soon as it’s ready.

94

5

(re)membering healing joy along the way

3

1

I wrote the below yesterday, and today the universe fulfilled with this extraordinary event organized by and celebrating @architate and her stunning work in community @bambulawan . I got to connect with new friends and my Raised Pinay sisters. Grateful, inspired, grateful, grateful. And if you can, donate to the beautiful work that @bambulawan is doing to lift up the community in Leyte and build bridges with us in the diaspora.

****

On community:

This week I’ve been feeling very tiny, in a human world where our history has been relatively short, but quickly forgotten. Trying to reckon with views that feel opposing: rotten systems repeat themselves, but humans generally try to move towards joy. In the midst of political chaos, I flash on this quote spoken by Rick Blaine in Casablanca, “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

f I think of myself in terms of size, political influence, ability to reach and impact the masses - I am, indeed, small. But if I think of myself as part of a larger system, one being in a system that is impacted by my words, love, relationship - how I, in being myself, ripple out like a stone thrown into a pond - then, huh, there’s a reason, an impact, a rippling out to the small things I do on a daily basis.

In adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy, she quotes Morgan Mann Willis:

…look at the anatomy of trees as one of nature’s examples of successful organizing that realizes that our power is in our ability to both be fiercely centered and grounded but also infinitely reaching towards our unique sources of energy, light, and growth. Each tree’s elements are reliant on one another but totally unique in form and function. There is no competition or pressure to be the root or the trunk or the buds that bloom.

So, for me, being in and with community feels like a necessary and crucial step in reiterating my place in the world. It’s by being in community that I realize our world is indeed impacted by our small decisions, that the tiny actions ripple out and create change.

What is one step you’re taking to create community?

24

2