Bamboo Canopy Tower & Playground Workshop

The Bamboo Canopy Tower and Playground Workshop is a five-day, four-night hands-on build led by the team at Suan Loong Choke, the bamboo forest school in Wang Nam Khiao, Nakhon Ratchasima. Running from 12 to 16 August 2026 under the banner Withi Khon Withi Phai, or Living with Bamboo, it is an official edge event of the 16th International Permaculture Convergence. Over the five days a small group works alongside experienced bamboo craftspeople to raise a full-scale climbing tower and playground from living material, the kind of structure that usually exists only in drawings. The finished tower stands twelve metres tall, with a three metre outer ring and a narrower inner ring, an internal spiral climb, a central cargo net and rest platforms set at four, eight and twelve metres. Guard rails run on every level and a stair wraps the outside, and the whole structure is designed to be safe for children from about six years old upward.

The design shows how much thought goes into building a play structure from a natural material. The tower is engineered for strength and safety, with a sturdy braced frame, a central rotating climbing element, an internal cargo net for the ascent, the three graded rest platforms, a perimeter stair for those who prefer not to climb the net, and guard rails on every level. Because it is built to real specifications rather than as a temporary demonstration, the tower and playground remain at Suan Loong Choke afterward as a lasting space for the school and the surrounding community, which is part of why the hosts frame the project as building a place of learning rather than only running a course.

The workshop is built so that participants move from understanding the material to building with it at real scale. It opens with a bamboo masterclass on selecting, treating and reading the poles, then moves through advanced jointing and lashing, real-scale construction of the tower and playground, and a final canopy graduation once the structure is complete. In practice the days flow from theory and material selection into hands-on co-creation and then final assembly and celebration, so everyone takes part in the whole arc from raw culm to standing structure. Because the build relies on traditional joinery and lashing rather than heavy hardware, the skills carry directly into other bamboo projects, from garden shelters to full buildings. Participants learn from Loong Choke and his team of bamboo craftspeople, joined by the architect Urawan Pinitugsorn, a specialist in children’s play spaces, so the teaching combines deep knowledge of the material with careful, safety-led design for young users.

The setting is a large part of the appeal. Suan Loong Choke, which translates as Uncle Choke’s Garden, is an agroforestry and bamboo learning centre set within a thriving forest landscape and built around the philosophy of self-reliance, aiming to meet the four basic human needs of food, shelter, clothing and medicine through bamboo and the forest. Bamboo runs through everything on the site, from nurseries and harvesting to finished products such as furniture, treated building poles, activated charcoal and eco-friendly wellness goods, and the centre also teaches reforestation, bamboo construction and biochar production. The course runs on these grounds among mature groves and finished bamboo buildings that show what the craft can produce, from woven thatched pods to curved pavilions and A-frame huts, and there is a farm-to-table rhythm to daily life here, with healthy meals and open activity grounds used for workshops and gatherings.

Participants stay on site in simple cottages, shared dormitories or scenic campsites among the bamboo, and the fee of 8,000 baht is inclusive, covering that lodging, all meals and all instruction, with additional donations and sponsors welcomed to support the school’s wider work with children and community. Places are limited to a small group so that everyone gets real time on the structure. Participants are asked to arrive on the afternoon of 12 August before dinner, and the course finishes after lunch on 16 August. Transport from Bangkok is not included, though the organisers can help with directions or arrange travel for a group on request. The hosts describe the build plainly as making not simply a playground but a place of learning that connects people with nature through bamboo wisdom, to pass on to the next generation. To ask about a place, contact michael at greennet.or.th, email [email protected], or call 098 969 4955.