When a catastrophic fireplace broke out at Wang Fuk Court docket in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district in November, killing 160 individuals, the condo advanced had been present process renovations to restore the buildings’ exterior partitions. Bamboo scaffoldings had been erected to the complete peak of the roughly 328-foot-tall towers.
Although it has since been confirmed by authorities that extremely flammable supplies, equivalent to substandard inexperienced mesh netting and styrofoam boards protecting the home windows, have been the principle contributors for the velocity and unfold of the hearth, bamboo scaffolding rapidly got here below scrutiny from officers within the fireplace’s aftermath.
A lot of Hong Kong’s public reacted swiftly in its protection. On-line and within the streets, individuals argued that the fabric had lengthy been unfairly maligned and couldn’t have pushed the blaze. But with every day that has adopted the hearth, the regulatory noose for the craft has tightened, calling in to query the way forward for bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong.
Nevertheless, the shift away from bamboo had begun months earlier. On March 17, 2025, the Growth Bureau issued a directive encouraging “the broader adoption of steel scaffolds in public works.” The assertion acknowledged bamboo’s velocity, flexibility, and low value, however framed steel as extra aligned with practices in China and in “superior economies.” Scaffolders reacted stoically.
Some puzzled whether or not China’s rising metal inventories performed a job. The directive alone didn’t quantity to a ban, but it marked a turning level in how the federal government positioned bamboo—not as an unquestioned a part of Hong Kong’s constructing logic, however as a system to be reconsidered. One which has served town for properly over a century and enabled the vertical growth and unmatched city density, and could be envisioned when Chan Siu Fan, a third era grasp bamboo scaffolder tells me in an interview, which was performed as part of my analysis on bamboo scaffolding: “Wherever an individual can match, I can construct a bamboo scaffold.”
To grasp what stands to be misplaced, one should look carefully on the materials itself—and on the individuals whose talent provides it kind. Bamboo scaffolding resists neat classification below up to date regulation as a result of its intelligence is just not industrial however materials. A bamboo pole is gentle but exceptionally robust: fibers run straight alongside its size, resisting bending, whereas its hole cylindrical kind carries compression effectively. What seems as flexibility—the slight sway of a scaffold within the wind—is, structurally, considered one of bamboo’s best benefits. It absorbs motion as an alternative of combating it.
The place a steel scaffold have to be braced and anchored to keep away from deformation, a bamboo scaffold is supposed to regulate, it might probably take up wind, vibration, and the on a regular basis forces of development by bending and resettling with out shedding integrity. This attribute is particularly vital in a metropolis that experiences robust winds throughout typhoons.
The scaffoldings in Hong Kong use two regionally accessible bamboo species, known as kao jue and mao jue, of which the exterior diameter at base are round 1.5 inch and three.15 inch respectively. The poles are inexperienced when harvested, indicating a excessive quantity of moisture and normally dried below the solar for round 4 weeks till they flip yellowish, earlier than happening website.
Whereas bamboo is a flamable materials, its habits in fireplace is formed by its density, hole construction, moisture, and silica content material, which might make it comparatively proof against ignition. Although it stays flammable, its efficiency relies upon closely on the supplies and situations with which it’s mixed.
Behind the fabric properties lies a craft system that’s simply as refined. Each joint—certain right this moment with standardized nylon instead of the traditionally used cut up bamboo—incorporates a tacit calculation: angle, rigidity, grain habits. As engineer S. Ramanathan wrote, bamboo scaffolds are “self-verifying,” their stability examined repeatedly by the motion of the employee assembling them. The craft is embodied in every scaffolder and handed down from era to era.
When accompanying two scaffolders, Timmy So and his father So Sifu, on a job they instructed me in regards to the significance of studying to work with out gloves, noting “the physique should really feel the stress of the knot and the house that’s left between the poles for motion.” This sense is tough to translate right into a consumer handbook. “You must follow to grasp it,” mentioned So Sifu.
The method dates again not less than 2,000 years and within the newer historical past has been used to construct a few of the metropolis’s tallest skyscrapers, like Norman Foster’s HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong’s Central district. Apart from serving an important use within the development of latest high-rise towers, bamboo scaffoldings are sometimes additionally utilized in small-scale renovation tasks, the place house could be much more cramped in Hong Kong’s tight city material.
Watching the 65-year-old grasp swing himself up throughout the construction as his son handed him 7-meter-long bamboo poles, the processes behind constructing a scaffolding construction started to really feel like a theater piece. Nevertheless, Timmy defined that constructing is barely a small portion of what scaffolders do, and that earlier than this three-hour job he had spent two days within the workplace filling out paperwork to satisfy town’s stringent rules.
After an investigation of the hearth, officers discovered that the inexperienced netting on the outside layer of the scaffolding, which serves as safety from particles and dirt throughout development, was beneath fire-retardant requirements within the case of Tai Po. The higher components of the towers had been wrapped in a less expensive and extremely inflammable netting. This led the federal government to determine a brand new regulation within the weeks following the hearth requiring the removing of all protecting meshes from scaffoldings throughout town, leaving them of their bare, skeleton-like kind.
Nevertheless, additionally within the week following the Tai Po tragedy, the Hong Kong Building Business Council (CIC) has suspended the 122-day coaching and assessments for bamboo scaffolders. This suspension marks one other impediment for an business with an already growing older labor pressure—the vast majority of the three,000 licensed scaffolders are of their fifties or early sixties. These modifications danger the acceleration of bamboo scaffolding’s decline, and if additional motion isn’t taken, the craft could disappear inside the subsequent era.
What stays is a query not merely of regulation however of worth. What does Hong Kong select to honor as a part of its architectural id? What types of data does it permit to persist?
Bamboo scaffolding is just not nostalgia; it’s a dwelling, adaptive system that has enabled town’s architectural ambitions for greater than a century. To lose it now—by coverage, false impression, or neglect—could be to sever a manner of creating that’s inseparable from Hong Kong’s spatial and cultural intelligence.
Raffaella Endrizzi is a Swiss architect and photographer, dwelling in Hong Kong since 2020 and presently engaged on an archive/analysis challenge on bamboo scaffoldings.
