Elora hardy

Realizing her dream house, a fairy-mushroom structure, at the age of 9 with the help of her mother, Elora Hardy has always been inclined towards the whimsical and unusual.

John hardy

Being brought up by two creative artists, in Canada and Bali, Elora started her journey in design through an art school in the United States. Not interested in being a gallery artist, she went to New York to work for one of the most influential fashion designers and produced textile prints for the biggest runways in the world. Successful in her career of 5 years in the fashion industry, she quit her glamorous city life to find her passion in Bali in in the form of IBUKU.

Inspired by her father, John Hardy, who is the genius behind the acclaimed Green School, she joined and later perpetuated his conviction to provide better lives for future generations by creating a healthy, natural, nourishing living environment. He used bamboo as a construction material for this school as a promise to the children, reaffirming the presence of one sustainable , abundant, decomposable material that they will not run out of.

This was a promise of abundance, inspiring innovation. Highly influenced by the construction of this structure, Elora started to seek innovative and creative solutions to intuitive, yet viable structures made from bamboo. Bamboo was the material chosen, to translate Balinese craftsmanship and instincts into a new language of design.

Gathering bamboo up to 18 m of usable length, providing tensile strength of steel and compressive strength of concrete, Elora made the site context her canvas, experimenting, assembling, dismantling on scaled-down 3D models of the to-be-built structure. Showing off the possibilities, her philosophy is to inspire, to connect people with this natural material, by making it desirable, while uplifting the human skill and craftsmanship along the way.

Taking a stern stand and learning what is needed in the process, the structures demonstrate their pride through quality and a just sense of unruly abundance and experimentation.