This Village In Indonesia Is Made Entirely Out Of A Material You'd Never Suspect
Elora Hardy, a renowned designer and architect, gave up her cushy New York fashion industry job to design homes in Bali, Indonesia made entirely from Bamboo.
Not only is she and her team of artisans innovating architecture as a whole, they're changing the way the world sees bamboo.
Elora's inspiration for the massive natural structures came from her father's design for the all bamboo K-12 school, "Green School," also in Bali.
Bamboo has the compressive force of concrete, and the strength-to-weight ratio of steel. On top of that, because of its hollowness, it's also exponentially lighter.
Hardy, who as mentioned before, was inspired by her father's building of The Green School, says that he “chose bamboo for all of the buildings on campus, because he saw it as a promise,†she explains in her TED talk. “It’s a promise to the kids. It’s one sustainable material that they will not run out of."
Together, between the Green Village and the Green School, Elora and her father John call their gorgeous and colossal bamboo commune "Ibuku." "Ibu" meaning "mother," in Bali's local dialect, and "ku" meaning "mine." Translated, it means, "my mother," a reference of course, to Mother Earth and her resources.
Bamboo has been used in the Tropics as a building material for centuries upon centuries. Except up until now, bamboo was easily weathered, and incredibly susceptible to bugs, like termites. Now, Hardy and her father have all of Ibuku's bamboo carefully treated with boron salt, which makes it impossible for bugs to digest, and greatly mitigates wear and tear from the elements.
