Nowadays, people mostly use concrete and bricks for building homes and structures. However, Elora Hardy takes another approach by building environmentally sustainable bamboo houses. Indeed, she builds some quite impressive structures using this material. She and her company Ibuku have been able to develop some splendid projects like the beautiful Sharma Springs villa., Green Village and Green School. Her work has proved that bamboo is not only well suited for banal shelters but also for the luxury houses. Although, the bamboo architecture differs from the normal one owing to the particular shape of the bamboo. Most of these buildings are made from Bamboo nails but steel nails are required to be used at points of critical structural significance.
Bamboo has some particular advantages when used as a building material: it grows quickly, its earthquake resistant, it can be transported easily, its compression resistance is comparable to that of concrete and tensile strength to that of steel. All these things have been recounted by Hardy in here TED talk. However, the main problem of using bamboo is that it is more prone to the attacks by bugs. They had to solve this problem by using different salts before they started building their home.
Elora Hardy is originally from Bali. She worked for 10 years in New York before returning home to Bali. She is the founder of Ibuku company which specializes in building bamboo houses. Her aim is to prove that Bamboo is a viable building material. She buys bamboo from the local farmers to support the local economy. She says the she is inspired by her mother who had asked her to build her home when she was just 9. This set Elora on the path that she still follows today.
More info: ibuku.com (h/t: treehugger)
Elora Hardy’s on magic houses using Bamboo on TED talk:
This work is really mind-blowing. We would love to live one such house. And you, do you think bamboo can replace the traditional building material?