essentialactivities
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I
t’s the end of the school day. Parents park
before congregating to locate and pick up their
children. There’s a cacophony of noise as kids
of all ages meander around, classes finished for
the day. Some bounce balls, others run around,
while some make their way to extra-curricular
activities. It’s just another ordinary day at school.
But this is no ordinary school.
Indeed it is an extraordinary school in many ways,
one awarded “2012 Greenest School on Earth” by
the US Green Building Council. And it is one third
of a triumvirate, along with the Green Village and
PT Bamboo Pure company that together tell a
remarkable tale of ecological success combined
with luxury living and high quality education. And it
all revolves around one thing: bamboo.
One of our missions at Essential Bali is to learn
something new in each issue (and to hopefully
inspire our readers to learn a new trick or two of
their own.) We’ve posed in a yoga class, caught a
wave during a surf lesson and cooked up a storm
in a Balinese kitchen but these are all things we
knew we would do before a word was typed on
the keyboard. We didn’t foresee crafting bamboo
house models and learning how to build with it.
But let us step back a bit and tell the story behind
the bamboo extravaganza we’re about to unfold.
The story goes that Bali residents, John and Cynthia
Hardy, were selling their share in a tremendously
successful jewellery business and looking forward
to a gentle retirement. But the Hardys started
thinking seriously about environmental issues and
determined to start a new project to address them.
They came up with the idea of a Green School
that would be built entirely of bamboo and provide
children with a place to learn in an education
system somewhat different from the norm.
John was inspired to build with bamboo by his
friend Linda Garland who had researched safe
and environmental bamboo treatment methods
in Bali by founding the Environmental Bamboo
Foundation. He gathered a team of local and
international craftsmen, artists, and builders, and
kept developing the techniques and capabilities as
they built the Green School.
Subsequently, John and Cynthia’s daughter, Elora,
returned to Bali and established PT Bamboo Pure
Workshop, also founding the Ibuku design agency
to design the Green Village and other projects,
employing many who worked on Green School.
The school and houses represent a collection
of astonishing, beautiful, innovative buildings
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