Craft House Client, IBUKU, Featured In Elle Decor

Eclipse House at Green Village, Bali

AN INVENTIVE BAMBOO VILLA IN THE HEART OF BALI

Designer Elora Hardy returns home to the Indonesian jungle to create a fantastical structure shaped by nature and sustainability.

By Gisela Williams for Elle Decor

Growing up on the island of Bali in the 1980s, Elora Hardy was surrounded by people who had the gift of transforming natural materials into beautiful things. She observed local women weaving prayer offerings out of palm leaves. A family friend, the interior designer Linda Garland, was designing chunky bamboo furniture for such clients as Mick Jagger. Meanwhile, Hardy’s father—the renowned Canadian jeweler John Hardy— was fashioning small treasures out of precious metals. Determined to become a designer herself, Hardy headed to New York, where she created fabric patterns for Donna Karan.

In 2008, she returned to Bali to help her father build the Green School, an elementary school with an emphasis on environmental education and a campus made of sustainable bamboo. The experience inspired Hardy to found her Bali-based design studio, Ibuku, where she oversees the design and construction of organic bamboo homes in a fantastical, futuristic style.

A Whimsical Exterior

Her latest project, Eclipse House, is a three-story structure that clings to a forested slope outside the village of Sibang Gede in central Bali, suspended over a series of terraces that cascade down to a crescent-shaped infinity pool.

Built primarily with Black Petung bamboo, the home is surrounded by black sugar palms and faces a deep ravine to the east.

The Rubberwood Deck

With tiered roofs clad in local bamboo shingles, the home has the feel of a space-age bird’s nest.

A rubberwood deck in a Balinese home designed by Elora Hardy and Indriana Sukma Hayuningtyas with architects Defit Wijaya and Rita Santoso.

A Moon-Shaped Entrance

The home is entered through a moon-shaped portal with a hand-laminated bamboo frame that leads into a dining room and circular kitchen, fitted with copper sinks hand-hammered on the neighboring Indonesian island of Java.

Inside, the dining room’s bamboo furniture is custom.

Master Bedroom

A staircase with a black bamboo banister swoops upward to the master bedroom. There, it morphs into a latticed dome of 16 curved bands of bamboo that hover dramatically and protectively over the bed. A domed canopy of shaped bamboo with mosquito-net draperies is suspended over the master bed.

Master Bathroom

The interiors are an object lesson in the infinite adaptability of bamboo. Stalks of it are woven into basket-like textures for walls, or smashed into surfaces with a gleaming, laminated look.

In the master bath, the Japanese-style wooden tub and Javanese hand-hammered copper sinks are custom.

Guest Bedroom

All of the furniture in the house—from the rattan side tables to a crescent sofa back made of shaped bamboo— was created at PT Bamboo Pure, a Balinese workshop, which also recently produced bamboo seating for Donna Karan’s Urban Zen store in Manhattan. The guest room’s custom bamboo bed is topped with Indian bedding and a mosquito-​net canopy. Polished slices of river stone cover the floor.

A terrace Immerse in the Jungle

Currently juggling numerous projects—a residence in China, a restaurant in Peru, and a hotel in Bali—Hardy is determined to keep pushing her signature material to its absolute limit. A custom bench and tables on the terrace, which overlooks a teak plantation belonging to a local temple.

The Design Team

My goal is to build structures that make it seem as if the bamboo wanted to grow and evolve in that direction,” she says. “They should feel like nature itself shaped them that way.” - Elora Hardy