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When I was nine years old,

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my mom asked me what I would want
my house to look like,

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and I drew this fairy mushroom.

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And then she actually built it.

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(Laughter)

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I don't think I realized
this was so unusual at the time,

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and maybe I still haven't,

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because I'm still designing houses.

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This is a six-story bespoke home
on the island of Bali.

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It's built almost entirely from bamboo.

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The living room overlooks the valley
from the fourth floor.

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You enter the house by a bridge.

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It can get hot in the tropics,

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so we make big curving roofs
to catch the breezes.

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But some rooms have tall windows
to keep the air conditioning in

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and the bugs out.

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This room we left open.

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We made an air-conditioned, tented bed.

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And one client wanted a TV room
in the corner of her living room.

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Boxing off an area with tall walls
just didn't feel right,

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so instead, we made this giant woven pod.

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Now, we do have all the necessary
luxuries, like bathrooms.

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This one is a basket
in the corner of the living room,

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and I've got tell you, some people
actually hesitate to use it.

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We have not quite figured out
our acoustic insulation.

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(Laughter)

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So there are lots of things
that we're still working on,

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but one thing I have learned


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is that bamboo will treat you well
if you use it right.

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It's actually a wild grass.

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It grows on otherwise unproductive land --

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deep ravines, mountainsides.

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It lives off of rainwater,
spring water, sunlight,

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and of the 1,450 species of bamboo
that grow across the world,

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we use just seven of them.

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That's my dad.

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He's the one who got me
building with bamboo,

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and he is standing in a clump

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of Dendrocalamus asper niger
that he planted just seven years ago.

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Each year, it sends up
a new generation of shoots.

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That shoot, we watched it grow a meter
in three days just last week,

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so we're talking about sustainable
timber in three years.

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Now, we harvest from hundreds
of family-owned clumps.

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Betung, as we call it, it's really long,

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up to 18 meters of usable length.

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Try getting that truck down the mountain.

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And it's strong: it has
the tensile strength of steel,

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the compressive strength of concrete.

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Slam four tons straight down on a pole,

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and it can take it.

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Because it's hollow, it's lightweight,

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light enough to be lifted
by just a few men,

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or, apparently, one woman.

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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And when my father
built Green School in Bali,

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he chose bamboo for all
of the buildings on campus,

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because he saw it as a promise.

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It's a promise to the kids.

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It's one sustainable material
that they will not run out of.

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And when I first saw these structures
under construction about six years ago,

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I just thought, this makes perfect sense.

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It is growing all around us.

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It's strong. It's elegant.

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It's earthquake-resistant.

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Why hasn't this happened sooner,
and what can we do with it next?

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So along with some of
the original builders of Green School,

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I founded Ibuku.

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Ibu means "mother," and ku means "mine,"
so it represents my Mother Earth,

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and at Ibuku, we are a team
of artisans, architects and designers,

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and what we're doing together
is creating a new way of building.

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Over the past five years together,

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we have built over 50 unique structures,
most of them in Bali.

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Nine of them are at Green Village --

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you've just seen inside
some of these homes --

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and we fill them with bespoke furniture,

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we surround them with veggie gardens,

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we would love to invite you all
to come visit someday.

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And while you're there,
you can also see Green School --

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we keep building
classrooms there each year --

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as well as an updated
fairy mushroom house.

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We're also working on
a little house for export.

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This is a traditional Sumbanese home
that we replicated,

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right down to the details and textiles.

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A restaurant
with an open-air kitchen.

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It looks a lot like a kitchen, right?

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And a bridge that spans
22 meters across a river.

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Now, what we're doing,
it's not entirely new.

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From little huts to elaborate bridges
like this one in Java,

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bamboo has been in use across
the tropical regions of the world

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for literally tens of thousands of years.

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There are islands and even continents
that were first reached by bamboo rafts.

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But until recently,

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it was almost impossible to reliably
protect bamboo from insects,

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and so, just about everything
that was ever built out of bamboo is gone.

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Unprotected bamboo weathers.

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Untreated bamboo gets eaten to dust.

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And so that's why most people,
especially in Asia,

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think that you couldn't be poor enough
or rural enough to actually want

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to live in a bamboo house.

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And so we thought,

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what will it take to change their minds,

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to convince people
that bamboo is worth building with,

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much less worth aspiring to?

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First, we needed safe treatment solutions.

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Borax is a natural salt.

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It turns bamboo into
a viable building material.

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Treat it properly, design it carefully,

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and a bamboo structure
can last a lifetime.

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Second, build something
extraordinary out of it.

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Inspire people.

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Fortunately,

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Balinese culture fosters craftsmanship.

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It values the artisan.

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So combine those
with the adventurous outliers

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from new generations
of locally trained architects

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and designers and engineers,

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and always remember that you are designing

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for curving, tapering, hollow poles.

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No two poles alike, no straight lines,

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no two-by-fours here.

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The tried-and-true, well-crafted formulas
and vocabulary of architecture

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do not apply here.

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We have had to invent our own rules.

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We ask the bamboo what it's good at,
what it wants to become,

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and what it says is: respect it,
design for its strengths,

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protect it from water,
and to make the most of its curves.

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So we design in real 3D,

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making scale structural models

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out of the same material
that we'll later use to build the house.

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And bamboo model-making, it's an art,

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as well as some hardcore engineering.

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So that's the blueprint of the house.

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(Laughter)

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And we bring it to site,

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and with tiny rulers,
we measure each pole,

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and consider each curve, and we choose
a piece of bamboo from the pile

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to replicate that house on site.

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When it comes down to the details,
we consider everything.

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Why are doors so often rectangular?

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Why not round?

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How could you make a door better?

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Well, its hinges battle with gravity,

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and gravity will always win in the end,

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so why not have it pivot on the center

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where it can stay balanced?

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And while you're at it,
why not doors shaped like teardrops?

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To reap the selective benefits
and work within the constraints

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of this material,

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we have really had to push ourselves,

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and within that constraint,
we have found space for something new.

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It's a challenge: how
do you make a ceiling

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if you don't have any
flat boards to work with?

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Let me tell you, sometimes I dream
of sheet rock and plywood.

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(Laughter)

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But if what you've got
is skilled craftsmen

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and itsy bitsy little splits,

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weave that ceiling together,

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stretch a canvas over it, lacquer it.

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How do you design durable
kitchen countertops

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that do justice to this curving
structure you've just built?

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Slice up a boulder like a loaf of bread,

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hand-carve each to fit the other,

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leave the crusts on,

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and what we're doing,
it is almost entirely handmade.

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The structural connections
of our buildings

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are reinforced by steel joints, but we use
a lot of hand-whittled bamboo pins.

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There are thousands of pins in each floor.

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This floor is made of glossy
and durable bamboo skin.

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You can feel the texture under bare feet.

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And the floor that you walk on,

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can it affect the way that you walk?

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Can it change the footprint
that you'll ultimately leave on the world?

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I remember being nine years old

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and feeling wonder,

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and possibility,

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and a little bit of idealism.

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And we've got a really long way to go,

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there's a lot left to learn,

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but one thing I know is that
with creativity and commitment,

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you can create beauty and comfort

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and safety and even luxury

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out of a material that will grow back.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)