EASTERN FLAVOUR

Bamboo scaffolding is still a common sight in Asian countries because of the abundance of, well, bamboo. Although the market is declining because of deforestation and a preference for more modern methods, there are still some five million bamboo poles (about six metres long) used annually for construction. Bamboo takes about three years to mature and is predominantly put to construction use in Hong Kong’s ever-changing concrete jungle. The incident rates for bamboo scaffolding is a small fraction of all reported construction accidents, but dwindling numbers of artisans and an unreliable import stream makes it difficult to predict the existence of these structures beyond the next decade.