Sustainable architecture for Manabi after the 2016 earthquake (EC2020SIN273A101)

The reconstruction of the province of Manabí after the earthquake in 2016, is still on-going. The authorities see an opportunity to rebuild homes using resilient materials. The use of bamboo as construction material was reduced over the last decades due to the use of concrete. However, the concrete structures in Ecuador are not resilient, are not well designed and very expensive to build. Therefore, the interest in bamboo is rising again: it is affordable, because it grows locally, and it is resilient to earthquakes. The project will form professors, researchers and teachers from the Universidad San Gregorio de Portoviejo, so that they are able to perform numerical analyses of bamboo structures and teach students about such analyses. The project fits within a larger aim of the university to train local craftsmen and students for resilient building using bamboo