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Rating: 
Summary: Best Bamboo Book for Sophisticated Guadua Architecture
Review: During the International Bamboo Festival at Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Miami, I had the pleasure of personally meeting Marcelo Villegas. He is truly "el miestro", a master carpenter, who builds some of the most exciting and innovative bamboo buildings in the world. He is soft-spoken, humble, and refers to himself as a simple carpenter, not master.The book is a great reference for photographs of his most recent exciting work. Bamboo is a natural building material which has some very interesting properties. It is as strong as steel by weight and has incredible strength under tension. Villegas has a deep understanding for the special type of bamboo he used, Guadua Angustifolia, which is native to his Colombia. He treats each project organically and executes them flawlessly. He helped build the largest bamboo structure in the world which was tested by German Engineers for the WORLD EXPO in Hannover in 2000. The structure was so strong, according to him, that is surpassed german building codes (the toughest in the world). This is a MUST buy bamboo book, one you won't regret buying.
Rating:
Summary: How can you forget the ZERI Foundation?
Review: During the International Bamboo Festival at Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Miami, I had the pleasure of personally meeting Marcelo Villegas. He is truly "el miestro", a master carpenter, who builds some of the most exciting and innovative bamboo buildings in the world. He is soft-spoken, humble, and refers to himself as a simple carpenter, not master. The book is a great reference for photographs of his most recent exciting work. Bamboo is a natural building material which has some very interesting properties. It is as strong as steel by weight and has incredible strength under tension. Villegas has a deep understanding for the special type of bamboo he used, Guadua Angustifolia, which is native to his Colombia. He treats each project organically and executes them flawlessly. He helped build the largest bamboo structure in the world which was tested by German Engineers for the WORLD EXPO in Hannover in 2000. The structure was so strong, according to him, that is surpassed german building codes (the toughest in the world). This is a MUST buy bamboo book, one you won't regret buying.
Rating:
Summary: How can you forget the ZERI Foundation?
Review: The book is beautiful, well documented and presents a marvellous insight about the great work of Simon Velez and his colleague Marcelo Villegas. It is though a mystery that the book simply decides to neglect mentioning the ZERI Foundation and its protagonist Gunter Pauli who prefered to go broke over the initiative, then to drop the ball half way. Thanks to his determination the full scientific tests on bamboo could be undertaken, the building permit could be obtained for a first time ever in an industrialzed country, and the 6.4 million visitors could admire the masterpiece created by Simon Velez. One would have expected that an othewise professional publisher like Villegas Editores, who is well aware of the origins of the great building in Hanover would have put reality in balance. After all without this large investment this masterpiece would never have materialized. It is hoped that the book will quickly sell out, become a great success which it deserves and then this minor error could be corrected.
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