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UN/DICYT Guadua bamboo wood due to its cylindrical form and hardness is difficult to handle in order to cut sheets for industrial use. A UNal project will allow having triangular guadua bamboo.

Given its natural form, guadua bamboo laminates uses a lot of glue and processing time and is somewhat reduced in size. Being triangular form, boards obtained for lamination have larger areas and thicknesses. Furthermore waste is reduced (sawdust) as well as glue and machining.

Boards obtained traditionally are 25 mm wide and 5 mm think. With triangular guadua bamboo boards are now between 40 and 60 mm wide and thickness may be increased between 3 and 4 mm, reducing costs in half.

In order to obtain guadua bamboo with this form UNal Professor Óscar Hidalgo recovered and documented a process created in Japan.

The method consists of placing a mold on the guadua bamboo over the resprout after four weeks of initiating its growth process and taking it off at six months. Due to the pressure exerted by the mold, guadua bamboo takes the desired form. Japanese growers and Hidalgo performed it with square based guadua bamboo and now a group of UNal Agricultural Engineering students will do the same but in triangular form.

Professor and Architect Walter Barreto which is heading the group says that the project hopes to improve the mold in order to make mass and mechanized production which may be attractive for farmers interested in marketing the product at the Colombian coffee growing area or the Provinces of Cundinamarca, Santander o the Cauca regions where this resource is currently being grown.

Similarly they are researching if the triangular form makes it stronger for construction, although according to Barreto, determining this requires larger sampling.

Guadua bamboo has multiple uses. The most common use is for making non-recoverable concrete forms, although it is also used of handicrafts (most of all in the coffee growing area) and large construction projects, such as the projects of Colombian Architect Simón Vélez.

Regarding guadua bamboo laminates, UNal is pioneering the method and has developed practical housing applications from this plant from the poaceae family.