The "Bamboo Greenhouse" by Associate Professor Hirohide Kobayashi of the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies receives the Good Design Award

The "Bamboo Greenhouse" by Associate Professor Hirohide Kobayashi of the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies receives the Good Design Award

October 5, 2009

The Bamboo Greenhouse, a plastic greenhouse utilizing bamboo designed by Associate Professor Hirohide Kobayashi (Engineering in Architecture) of the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies of Kyoto University received the Sustainable Design Award, a special award of the Good Design Awards 2009 (Organizer: the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization).

- The Good Design Sustainable Design Award 2009

This greenhouse was designed for the collaborative research titled "Establishment of a Short-Term Produce Cultivation System Harmonious with the Urban Landscape" (Research representative: Professor Yukihiro Morimoto, Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies; Coordinator: Professor Nobuhiro Hirai, Graduate School of Agriculture), participated in by Kyoto University, Kyoto Brighton Hotels, Chikiriya Garden, Nakagawa Bamboo Workshop, and Mebiol Inc.; it was created in March of this year by Nakagawa Bamboo Workshop, using moso bamboo thinned from the Kyoto University Katsura campus as its main structural material.

In the screening for the Good Design Award, the "simple and beautiful structure" (evaluation by jury members) and the fact that it provides a solution to the abandonment and growth of bamboo forests, which is becoming a social concern of late, were highly regarded. In the Bamboo Greenhouse erected within the premises of Kyoto Brighton Hotel, pathenogenic tomatoes called Kyo-temari, bred by Professor Emeritus Susumu Yazawa of Kyoto University (former Professor of Agriculture of the Graduate School of Agriculture), are being grown using the drip fertigation method (Mebiol Inc.). See below for external and internal appearance.