Building a Sustainable (bamboo) Future

A talk which makes you question yourself

First published in The Indian Fusion
Written by Prashant Agarwal

Wow! My first reaction after watching this talk and I couldn’t stop myself from sharing this talk with you all.

But before I share about this talk let me ask you all few questions!

• Don’t you ever feel that you are here for a bigger purpose than just serving a 9-5 job?
• Won’t you regret your whole life if death struck you today?

For me this talk by Elora Hardy made me ask these two basic and profound questions. While in this talk, she is talking about her life and how she is planning to give back to the society but somewhere; it would really make you think ‘What are we doing’?

In this talk she elaborates that she had always wanted to be a designer and at a very young age, she also achieved what she always wanted, but then the question struck her? And she left everything and came back to her country, Bali.

Today, she is a creative Director at IBUKU in Bali. IBUKU is a sustainable construction company, but it is surely not an ordinary sustainable company because when she decided to start this company she thought about Bali and what Bali is known for i.e. bamboo. So, IBUKU is a company, which uses only bamboo for construction. Her designs are not only creative, but also amazingly innovative.

While she has not done any course in architecture but her love for this job and her interest in this has given the whole world a new material to build houses, restaurants, schools and warehouses. She has also shown that the houses build using this bamboo are not only sustainable but also durable and beautiful.

Till now, she has designed a house and now she is working on building a completely green hotel in Bali using only the bamboo which can provide an avenue for the people to connect with nature.

She wants to do it so that she can show the world the potential of the bamboo and inspire more people to connect with bamboo.

But what really make this talk powerful are the three ways she talks about how the human beings get evolved

The first of these is..

Drastic change/crises, i.e. when an earthquake strikes or someone dies then your life takes a drastic different path and this type of evolution is not in anyone’s control.

Second Reason is..

Shift along the society at society pace:- In this you just keep moving along the path the whole life while never achieving the satisfaction you always wanted.


And the final reason is..

Why you are here today/ What gets you up in the morning: – It’s about the stand you take, whether you are prepared for it or not, irrespective of educational background or anything and that’s what made Elora leave here successful career and come back to Bali.

I do know that it would be a difficult decision for many of us but notwithstanding of anything, one day we really have to choose which path we want to take for our evolution.

Courtesy The Indian Fusion

ARB Team
Arbitrage Magazine
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