Building with bamboo: Photos from Bamboo U

The February edition of Bamboo U just wrapped up. The Kul Kul Farm team (led by Orin Hardy and Maria Farrugia) wrote a great review. There’s an excerpt of it below, but make sure to read the rest over on The Kul Kul Farm website.

Bamboo. The mighty plant of the tropics. The King (and Queen) of natural building. It stands tall in sheltered valleys, grows at a fascinating pace, and is gracefully flexible, strong and beautiful. Let’s face it, bamboo is why many people come to Green School. Combine this abundant material with the Balinese craftsmen and a creative design team.. and you have magic.

And who doesn’t want magic? So here we are. Bamboo U: February Edition. Our second successful bamboo building course, envisioned by John Hardy, developed by us at the farm, with the support of Elora Hardy and the IBUKU team.

Its a tall order delivering magic in 12 days, whilst giving people the skills and tools to create their own magic elsewhere. Especially when the experts; the Balinese craftsmen, don’t speak fluent English. But, when creative, passionate humans come together almost anything is possible.

In less that 2 weeks students visited some of the incredible bamboo homes at Green Village, learned how to harvest and manage bamboo clumps sustainably, built bamboo models, designed and crafted their own bamboo furniture pieces, experimented with 3D printing joints for building modular bamboo structures, wove a bamboo pantry to store our coconut sugar, built 2 bamboo garden carts using a natural resin to fix the joints together and built the farm’s new compost building. Phew!! (of course all of this happened with the help of an incredible team of craftsmen and carpenters).