Hospitality Design - November 2017 - 132

changemakers

the bamboo masters

John and Elora Hardy
After being horrified by Al Gore's documentary
An Inconvenient Truth, former jeweler John
Hardy and his wife, Cynthia decided that
instead of succumbing to climate change
anxiety, they would combat it firsthand by
creating a better, more thriving world.
They opened the Green School in Bali
in 2008 with 90 students (now upwards of
740), where sustainable ideas are the focus
of the curriculum. In 2010, John's daughter
Elora joined him to head up sustainable
architecture firm and bamboo innovator Ibuku,
helping to build Green Village, a sustainable
masterplanned community with 14 private,
bespoke homes and villas located about a half
mile from the school that fit into the contours
of the land. "They're often whimsical and
dynamic, and people are surprised they feel at
home in these curving spaces," she says.
Much like the Green School, Green
Village is "almost exclusively bamboo," says
Elora, a signature design material for the
Hardys, as it encapsulates their very mission:
It's fast growing, durable (it can withstand

Fourteen bespoke homes and villas
compose the bamboo-clad Green
Village in Bali

earthquakes), and can be shaped and formed
into unique structures that blend with the
surroundings. "Bamboo is a mind bender,"
explains Elora. "It's curving, it tapers, it's
hollow. It has extreme strength in dynamic
ways." The buildings often look as if they were
molded by nature because, in some ways, they
were. "There's this sense that they grew or were
meant to grow that way," she adds.
Along with a yoga pavilion in the Four
Seasons Resort Bali at Sayan, Ibuku has
recently embarked on projects outside the
island, including Tri restaurant in Hong Kong
and Como Marketplace in Singapore. With
70-plus bamboo buildings to its name, the firm
continues to expand John and Cynthia's ecoluxury boutique hotel Bambu Indah with the
newly opened rooms, the crescent-shaped Moon
House and the curvaceous Copper House. The
hotel is a project he envisioned when he bought
the land in 2005 so it wouldn't be overbuilt
"with ugly structures," he explains. "It's the
antithesis of corporate America hotels. People
come here because they've had enough of that."
This idea of being firmly rooted and
embraced by nature drives much of John and
Elora's ambitious concepts. From the beautiful

curving buildings at Green School to the cozy
homes in Green Village to the twisting and
intertwined houses at Bambu Indah, people
"feel more alive inside our buildings," she says.
Indeed, they are throwing out the box and the
ego behind design and building spaces that "feel
like they're already part of the world," she says.
Adds John: "Elora builds for the people. That's
magic, and it is in harmony with the site and in
harmony with the person."
As they continue to transcend the idea of
the built environment, the question for John
and Elora remains how do they convince
people that their ecological mindset, bamboo
structures, and longterm sustainable ideas are
worth the investment? The luxury of feeling the
breeze on your skin and the way the light falls
across the room because of how the bamboo is
angled is the "magic you get," she says. That's
what makes it worth it. "When you wake up in
a bamboo building," says John, "you're happy."

Photos by ISABELLA GINANNESCHI, TIM STREET PORTER, and ERROL VAES and courtesy of IBUKU

Green School and Ibuku
Hospitality Design - November 2017

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