essentialactivities
apparent that with bamboo the limits of
design lie more with your imagination than
the physical properties of the building
material. Having done a rough sketch we
then did a more detailed drawing with
measurements that was placed on some
foam to become our blueprint.
A fascinating two hours ensued as we ‘built’
a 1:50 model structure of our house from thin
bamboo and glue, learning much about
what was required to make the structures solid
and also how a design could evolve even as
you worked with it. Essential Bali didn’t set out
to design a house shaped like a cockroach
but that’s how it ended up. While our limited
handicraft skills left us with a cockroach that
had consumed one too many Bintangs, we
were quite proud of it.
As intimated, our strength at school was
nothing to do with our manual dexterity or
affinity for arts and crafts. That was to be
proven in our next lesson – woodwork. Or
bamboowork as it should be more accurately
termed. We were taught how to create
a strong joint using nothing but a couple
of interlocking pieces of bamboo – made
possible by carving a shallow groove in one
that the other would fit snugly into.
3. Where the heart is:
The centrepiece of Green
School is magnificent
4. This is how we do it:
Model makers conceive
another masterpiece
In truth we were rubbish at this and we would
happily say that if anyone points at a house
you want to stay in and says: “Essential
Bali helped us build that” we’d probably
shy away. But the fascination came from
watching our teacher, Moko, work expertly
with the material using nothing but a saw,
a knife and a drill to explain the basics of
bamboo construction. Time never flew this
quickly at school. Moko was a great teacher
and factory tour guide later in the day. He has
been working with bamboo since he was six
years old when his father taught him, but such
is the nature of this construction beast that
while to a novice he seemed to be a font of
all bamboo knowledge, he assured us that he
learns new things all the time.
It was then time to see what all the fuss wa