To live the American dream, being that of success, wealth and power, would be something that a lot of people would die to achieve in their lives. When you have worked so hard to realize your ambitions, you’d think that the only way left for you to go is upwards, continuously soaring towards a path of success. However, in the case of Elora Hardy, that’s not all there is to living at all.Hardy was once a very successful individual who worked in New York’s fashion scene. All the glitz and glamour that came along with some very deep pockets from her salary would have been enough for anyone to think that they can live a life of luxury already. Yet, she walked away from all of that.
It’s like she just decided to get up one day, let it all go and make a different path for herself. Of course, nobody expected it to be so drastic of a decision. What was left for her to do now that she just threw away an opportunity to live the American Dream?
The answer is actually quite a simple one: build bamboo houses. She embarked on a journey to Bali, along with a whole team to revolutionize the way people constructed bamboo houses. Quite a left-field career path, don’t you think?
According to Elora’s father, bamboo is a promise to children, a sustainable material which will always be around. After she saw many structures being built from bamboo, she immediately thought to go for such an endeavor, thus inspiring others to follow in her footsteps.
However, with bamboo being such a very effective renewable resource, it only made sense for her and her team to create housing from it. The material is sturdy yet also quite flexible, which means you can shape it anyway you want, so long as you got the tools to do so. That’s why you get to see a lot of bamboo houses in other parts of the world.
What makes bamboo such an interesting choice is that it combines a lot of the attributes that most construction workers love about their preferred materials. For example, bamboo has a strength to weight ratio that is equal to that of steel. It can handle a lot of weight, so to speak.
Bamboo is hardly used in commercial construction, with most professionals settling for steel and concrete. Yet, for truly sustainable living, it is the perfect choice. It can be re-used, recycled and also remains quite sturdy, especially boron bamboo. As you can expect from a place like Bali, the weather isn’t exactly perfect, but boron still manages to hold firm and stable despite exposure to such climates.
Some may see Elora’s decision as a rather stupid one, especially those who are always out to go for the practical route. However, doing this much of a service to the people of Bali will certainly carve her name into its history as a humanitarian and a philanthropist.
Another major plus with bamboo is that it is compressive much like concrete. You can expect to put a stack of them together as a wall, and for sure, they’d be pretty dense. Of course, boron treated bamboo is the go-to option for creating these houses, and so far everything has been secure, as well as beautifully constructed.
Of all the career paths she could have chosen, why bamboo house building? She could have just easily retired into obscurity with all the money she made in the fashion industry, right? Then again, don’t be so quick to judge a person.
However, there is the main concern that bamboo attracts pests, turning the material into something which they can eat. Hardy explains that she uses boron instead. This type of bamboo is a natural resource which actually is self preserving and is not digestible to insects at all.
The truth is, Elora says that she had derived some inspiration from her father. He used to utilize bamboo as material in the buildings around the campus. It makes perfect sense, considering its stability and flexibility.
