david@rizomebamboo.com

David has spent a lifetime engaged with bamboo. In Florida where he grew up, as a child he played in a bamboo clump that is well over 120 years old. He used that bamboo to build a raft that was semi-successful in that it made it to the center of the lake before sinking. As a scout on his way to achieving Eagle Scout he built bridges and towers of bamboo. In college he studied brush painting in Taiwan and learned that bamboo is the icon of the perfected human being: strong, resilient, with a quiet inner spaciousness and stillness. He has since spent over 50 years cultivating those qualities of bamboo through yoga and meditation and was the chairperson of Kripalu, the largest yoga retreat facility in the US, at the turn of the last century.

In 1995 in Hawaii, he prefabricated his first bamboo building and obtained building department approval. He went on to cofound Bamboo Living and developed the first US building code standard for structural bamboo resulting in the publication of the International Code Council Evaluation Services Report 1636 – ICC ESR1636 first published in 2004.

In 2009 at the World Bamboo Congress in Bangkok with the guidance of Dr. Walter Liese, David presented a climate solution using bamboo. In 2013 he founded RIZOME to implement that solution. RIZOME’s mission is to sequester gigatons of carbon by developing giant bamboo into a primary global building material. RIZOME is currently reforesting tens of thousands of acres and producing structural laminated bamboo building materials in the Philippines.

David has spoken at multiple bamboo conferences around the world including several World Bamboo Congresses and at the national conventions of the American Institute of Architects and the Structural Engineering Institute. His work in structural bamboo has been featured on Discovery Channel and HGTV.

In 2024 RIZOME was chosen as a top 30 solution for global carbon removal and storage by the Carbon Removal XPRIZE and awarded the Award for Corporate Excellence by the US State Department for its climate and social impact.

David is a licensed Architect in Hawaii since 1991 and is the former President of American Institute of Architects Maui. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from University of Florida.