Celebrating Visionaries in Bamboo Innovation

Liu Wen-hung was born on December 12, 1953, in Zhusan Town, Nantou County, Taiwan, a region rich in bamboo forest resources. He graduated from the Department of Animal Husbandry, Chinese Culture University in 1976, and completed his service in Penghu in 1979.

In Taiwan's small territory, the population density is high, and families have no resources to engage in animal husbandry. It was difficult to find a way to make a living. Living in a region rich in bamboo forests, he naturally saw bamboo as a material in which to make a business. The bamboo products seen in the market at that time were all raw round-pole bamboo products. Master Liu believed the round-pole bamboo was not suitable for contemporary designs. He believed it would be easy to standardize and use flat designs. His hope was to make products from bamboo that were comparable to high-end wood furniture. So, he started this new venture in 1980.

In 1981, Larry started working on laminated bamboo. No one else was doing this in Taiwan.
Soon, many Taiwanese companies copied his designs and took products to China before the 1990s. He made the first trip to China in 1990, and he has been trading with Lin Hai since 1996.

In 2000, he established a joint venture with local people in mainland China to set up bamboo flooring and bamboo furniture plywood (Hangzhou Dahe Wood Products Co., Ltd.) Larry innovates, designs, and creates products produced in China which are shipped to Taiwan for refinement.

His outstanding work won him the brand name “Bamboola”. He was invited to design for the first Tang Prize Award medal and has won many awards for outstanding performance in artistic design. A magician by nature and an artist by choice, Wen-huang Liu transforms simple bamboo into unforgettable creations in his workshop in Zhusan.

The Bamboola showroom is full of beautifully finished items of original design produced in a very high-tech factory. Among his works, fine furniture, school room desks, a set of tea ware, a name card holder and reusable chopsticks are all on display. His pieces are both beautiful and useful, and they often bear his trademark, hidden surprises! Larry’s ideas are developed using specialized computer programs and the laminated bamboo sheets are cut with precision by computerized cutting machines. One of his most incredible projects took place in 2012 involved his computer program to fit 5 km of curved bookshelves into the National Taiwan University School of Social Sciences library. The project was funded by Mr. Gu Zhenfu as a donation and designed by Toyo Ito of Japan. This project used 120,000 Moso culms; the original design of the mortise and tenon design overcomes the qualitative difficulties of the curved surface structure.

Liu’s craftsmanship is so extraordinary that it has won him six awards from the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute. In his own words, Larry says this,

“Bamboo’s rapid growth and ecological characteristics are undoubtedly an indispensable resource for the sustainability of the earth. I continue to design, create and develop to inject endless living water into the bamboo industry, to let the world know more about it, use and promote it to replace wood, plastic and petrochemical resources to protect the earth. Bamboo's natural texture and environmentally friendly properties have broad application prospects in various industries. At the same time, bamboo also meets the current society's needs for environmental protection and sustainable development, so it will be favored by more and more people. With the continuous advancement of science and technology and the improvement of environmental awareness, I believe
that bamboo will be more widely used and developed in the future, showing it to the world, in line with the purpose of the World Environmental Protection Association.”

Today we honor Master Liu with the WorldBamboo Pioneer Award.