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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
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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
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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,
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like bathrooms.
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This one is a basket
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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
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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
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in three days just last week,
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so we're talking about sustainable timber
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in three years.
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Now, we harvest from hundreds
of family-owned clumps.
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Batungas, 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
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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,
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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,
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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
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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,
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most of them in Bali.
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Nine of them are 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,
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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
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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
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across a river.
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Now, what we're doing,
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it's not entirely new.
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From little huts to elaborate bridges
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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
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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,
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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,
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what it wants to become,
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and what it says is, respect it,
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design for its strengths,
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protect it from water,
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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 hard core 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 rules, 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 a 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,
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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
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of sheet rock and plywood,
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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 can 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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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
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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)