> In 2018, [Liangbing] Hu's laboratory reported that partially removing lignin from natural wood and then compressing the remaining cellulose under heat produced a material roughly three times denser than the original timber and an order of magnitude stronger in bending and tension.[2] The material was commercially named Superwood.
It’s called engineered bamboo [1] but it’s not widely used yet as a load bearing material because manufacturers are still working on certifying it with building code organizations (and it may not be strong enough).
i'm no expert at this stuff, but i used to live in a home that had a bamboo garden maintained by a housemate. that stuff was so strong, i used it to make a box lol
Bamboo is orthotropic so it’s strong parallel to its fibers but much weaker perpendicular to them whereas wood is adapted to grow in both directions at the expense of being much slower. When you start adding fasteners (screws, nails, etc) bamboo starts to split along the fibers, becoming brittle and weakening the entire support structure.
That’s not to say it’s not strong enough necessarily, but building with bamboo requires different construction techniques and people are still working on validating its safety and updating building codes, which takes decades.
"has a 50% greater tensile strength than steel and a strength-to-weight ratio that’s 10 times better. "