Draping is not easy in fashion, but it is even more difficult in architecture. After all, when you create draped motifs with fabrics you are playing with a soft and pliable material, but, doing that in architecture and obtaining the illusion of creating smooth draped curves, is challenging. Yet Ibuku, a team of young designers, architects and engineers headed by Creative Director Elora Hardy (who also worked in fashion, designing prints for Donna Karan) and known for its innovative structures, managed to do so using a natural material, bamboo.
The Arc at Green School is a 760-square-metre lightweight structure in Kecamatan Abiansemal, Indonesia, the latest building on campus at the school (a concept initiated by John and Cynthia Hardy in 2006, while Green School Bali opened in 2008).
Green School is known for breaking boundaries in sustainable education and educating children from the early years through to secondary education and the Arc is designed as a community wellness space and gymnasium for the school campus.
Considered as unprecedented for its shape and the main material employed, The Arc is an innovative design solution, never executed before.
It is indeed made with a series of intersecting 14 metre-tall bamboo arches spanning 19 meters, interconnected by anticlastic gridshells deriving their strength from curving in two opposite directions, as explained by Ibuku.
The team developed the design in collaboration with German carpentry specialist Jörg Stamm, UK-based structural engineering firm Atelier One and construction company PT Bamboo Pure.
The Arc was the result of months of researches to fine tune these details and draped technique, but the result is striking.
The arches and the gridshell allowed the designers to give the impression the roof was literally "draped" over the arches, from a distance it looks indeed as if the structure were covered by a soft material like a light sheet of fabric.
The main inspiration came from nature and anatomy as well: the principle behind the building – creating ample spaces with minimal structure – can indeed be found in the human body.
In our ribcage, as Stamm highlights, a series of ribs working in compression are held in place and stabilized by a tensioned flexible layer of muscle and tendons; this creates a thin but strong encasement for the lungs.
In this case the arches are held in place by the tensioned anticlastic gridshells that act as tensile tendons. But, while tensile membranes transfer forces from bone to bone, in this case the forces are transferred from arch to arch.
In this way the anticlastic gridshells, that appear to hang from the arches but actually hold them up, give the structure a beautiful dynamism, holding the thin arches and forming waves, while providing buckling resistance to the parabolic arches.
The arches and the anticlastic gridshells result in a unique structure, in which the weight is redistributed, the inner volume presents a very thin structure and less structural material is also employed.
Visually striking with its undulating bamboo roof, the massive structure is still light (bamboo is hard as rock and strong as lumber, but bamboo culms are hollow on the inside) and flexible yet sturdy as the arches and the anticlastic gridshells give balance to the building, and the strength of the structure stands in the curving surfaces.
The building confirms that the future definitely stands in rediscovering traditional techniques and natural materials and combining them with new technologies to produce striking eco-friendly designs.
The Arc is completely integrated in its surrounding fields, and allows the children using it to seamlessly move from the gym to the playing fields.
Bamboo architecture is obviously not new and it is currently being rediscovered by quite a few architectural studios, but Ibuku have so far developed several innovative structures employing this durable and malleable material in unusual ways. Promoting organic architecture and ecological responsibility, the team offers new solutions by using this zero-carbon material.
This pioneering structure, that won the "Iconic Building" category at the 2021 Global Architecture Design Awards, can definitely inspire fashion designers as well. The arches and the anticlastic gridshells can probably be reinvented by accessory designers or, even better, by jewelry designers to create unique architectural pieces based on the same principles of this building.
Images credits for this post
Photographs of The Arc by Tommaso Riva