TRAVEL FACTS
forested farmland where he had been raising traditional black pigs. I fell in love with the outlook over the rice fields. I built myself a latticed room inspired by a yurt, but raised on stilts,” she says.
Then, from her wall-less, grass-roofed office in Ubud, Elora – with the help of her team of architects and engineers – built 12 bamboo mansions for the Green Village. Each wild grass castle that she made was more outlandish than the last.
Elora says that every 18-metre-long strand of bamboo leads the design. Collected from ravines on family owned farms, no two pieces are the same. It may be wild grass, but Elora says it’s a phenomenal building material. It has the tensile strength of steel and takes just three years to grow to maturity. “Bamboo constantly requires flexibility, new ways of thinking, and demands bespoke attention to be best expressed,” she explains.
As it’s so unique, Elora says her first attempts creating rooms within the homes felt too conventional. “The high roofs and leaning columns made walls impractical and even inappropriate, so we had to reconsider everything and truly think in 3D,” she says. Elora needed to create windows, door frames and even light fittings that matched the form of the bamboo poles. “Things that make sense against white or stone walls just looked odd against a curving bamboo screen,” she says.
Elora always keeps the environment in mind. If there are trees on-site, she builds around them. “My father says,
‘Who are we to take them down?’”
The eco-architect also adds other sustainable aspects to her homes, such as rainwater filtering stations, solar power and permaculture food gardens.
CASTLE IN THE SKY
When Elora built the Green Village, she created perhaps one of her most wellknown homes: the six-storey, Dr Seuss-like Sharma Springs. Guests can now follow a light-filled tunnel into the designer residence, with far-reaching views of the jungle. A spiral staircase leads you to a grand living space and five luxury bedrooms. Designed to immerse you in nature, the home is largely wall-free.
But Elora hasn’t forgotten the needs of a modern family, including a media room and bedrooms that have chilled air piped in via bamboo posts. The glamour
FURTHER INFORMATION ibuku.com continues in the grounds, with a guest room, private pool and massage sala.
The family who owns the home now rents it to holidaymakers for close to $2,000 per night on Airbnb.
While Elora started her work in Bali, her designs can now be seen across the globe. She has built treehouses in Panama, an event space in Las Vegas, and a bamboo restaurant in Hong Kong. Her most recent work includes the
Sunset Bar at her father and stepmother’s hotel, Bambu Indah in Ubud, where she installed a bamboo elevator.
Defit Wijaya, who is head of architecture for Ibuku, says it’s Elora’s fresh outlook that takes her designs to the next level. “It is amazing how she connects all the dots into becoming an Ibuku design experience. She has an eagle eye and can spot the tiniest details that may need improvement,” he says.
Elora says the secret to her design success might have first been spotted by one of her schoolfriends: “My highschool roommate called me a realist with my head in the clouds.”
Mari Beach Club Bali; a hanging bed at Sharma Springs © Rio Helmi; Alchemy Yoga Centre © Iker Zuniga; Bambu Indah © Stefano Scata