Nestled behind a beautiful Victorian at the foot of the Frederick Douglass House in D.C.'s historic Anacostia neighborhood is a property unlike any other on the East Coast: a home made almost entirely of bamboo.
"A lot of the DNA of the project is resourcefulness, wherever we can figure out a way to be resourceful," said architect Jack Becker.
The Grass House, as it's called, is used as an office for architecture and development company BLDUS.
"It utilizes a system called BamCore, which is manufactured in California and, hopefully, soon in Florida, that is a bamboo plywood wall system that allows you to get wall studs out of the project and as a consequence, have a fully insulated wall," Becker said.
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Architect Jack Becker says sheep's wool was used for extra insulation, along with other environmentally friendly features.
"Beside me is a willow wall that is a kind of woven alternative to a standard partition in a house and directly behind it is a stair that we built out of a black walnut tree that was literally felled in the Anacostia neighborhood," Becker said. "So we harvested the tree and milled it into the planks of the stair."
All of the shades for the light fixtures in the house are made of mushroom roots.
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Outside, the exterior is wrapped in cedar and cypress siding. But instead of using paint, a traditional Japanese charring method gives the home its dark color.
Architect Andrew Linn calls it farm-to-shelter architecture, similar to the farm-to-table concept you see at restaurants using locally sourced materials and meeting the people who manufacture the products.
"Our buildings can then become stories themselves about the locations that these materials are grown in and the communities that produce them," Linn said.
The property took about two years from inception to completion.
"We often bring clients and potential clients through the Grass House and discuss the different materials and different components with them and they might see the stairs or a table or a sub floor, something that catches their eye," Linn said.
The team hopes it will inspire others to try more eco-friendly concepts in their own designs.
The team at BLDUS recently finished an alley house in Capitol Hill and has others in the works that incorporate the same bamboo materials.
They said they're also experimenting with other eco-friendly materials like cork and bark cladding.
