Uploaded November 2016 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Green Village was inspired by the design of Green School, an eco friendly academy founded by John Hardy, the father of Elora Hardy, Ibuku’s founder and creative director. Ibu in Balinese means Mother, and ku means mine. Ibuku’s philosophy is similar to Green School’s desire to maintain a relationship with Mother Earth and the environment and delicate ecosystem that surrounds them.
According to a statement by Ibuku, “Bamboo is a flexible and tensile material with the strength equivalent to steel. We account for the flexibility in the engineering process and work to ensure our bamboo maintains its integrity over time. Bamboo is plentiful in river valleys throughout Asia, and the clumps regenerate each year. Bamboo is ready for use as a building material at age 3-5 years.”
While bamboo has been used worldwide in construction and craftsmanship for millennia, its structures don’t typically last long enough to be seen as a material worth permanence. Ibuku’s answer to this problem is a boron solution that suppresses glucose levels and renders it inedible for insects. According to Ibuku’s team, “If the bamboo is chosen well, treated properly, designed carefully and maintained, a bamboo house can last a lifetime. The bamboo houses are designed and built to avoid prolonged sun and rain exposure, and are varnished with a weather-resistant coating.”
Elora Hardy takes the bamboo house idea and runs with it, building magnificent structures made from an extremely sustainable material. She and her company Ibuku have already built many structures, including the Green School, Green Village and the magnificent Sharma Springs villa. These building proves that bamboo can not only be used for shelter, but to also create luxury. The curved form of the bamboo influenced the shape of the building and the doors . And while there are steel nails used at important structural points, most of the building is held together by bamboo nails.
Bamboo grows fast and has similar tensile strength to steel and the compression resistance of concrete, all points that Hardy raises on her TED talk. It’s also light which makes it easy to transport. However, it’s vulnerable to bugs and the elements – two key limitations that had to be overcome (via use of natural salts) even before they started building.
Elora Hardy comes from Bali and she returned there after a 10-year stint in New York. She created the Ibuku company to build bamboo houses in Bali, to prove bamboo as a suitable material for building. The company sources their material from independent bamboo clumps owned by individual families.
Green Village was inspired by the design of Green School, an eco friendly academy founded by John Hardy, the father of Elora Hardy, Ibuku’s founder and creative director. Ibu in Balinese means Mother, and ku means mine. Ibuku’s philosophy is similar to Green School’s desire to maintain a relationship with Mother Earth and the environment and delicate ecosystem that surrounds them.
According to a statement by Ibuku, “Bamboo is a flexible and tensile material with the strength equivalent to steel. We account for the flexibility in the engineering process and work to ensure our bamboo maintains its integrity over time. Bamboo is plentiful in river valleys throughout Asia, and the clumps regenerate each year. Bamboo is ready for use as a building material at age 3-5 years.”
While bamboo has been used worldwide in construction and craftsmanship for millennia, its structures don’t typically last long enough to be seen as a material worth permanence. Ibuku’s answer to this problem is a boron solution that suppresses glucose levels and renders it inedible for insects. According to Ibuku’s team, “If the bamboo is chosen well, treated properly, designed carefully and maintained, a bamboo house can last a lifetime. The bamboo houses are designed and built to avoid prolonged sun and rain exposure, and are varnished with a weather-resistant coating.”
Elora Hardy takes the bamboo house idea and runs with it, building magnificent structures made from an extremely sustainable material. She and her company Ibuku have already built many structures, including the Green School, Green Village and the magnificent Sharma Springs villa. These building proves that bamboo can not only be used for shelter, but to also create luxury. The curved form of the bamboo influenced the shape of the building and the doors . And while there are steel nails used at important structural points, most of the building is held together by bamboo nails.
Bamboo grows fast and has similar tensile strength to steel and the compression resistance of concrete, all points that Hardy raises on her TED talk. It’s also light which makes it easy to transport. However, it’s vulnerable to bugs and the elements – two key limitations that had to be overcome (via use of natural salts) even before they started building.
Elora Hardy comes from Bali and she returned there after a 10-year stint in New York. She created the Ibuku company to build bamboo houses in Bali, to prove bamboo as a suitable material for building. The company sources their material from independent bamboo clumps owned by individual families.
