Elora Hardy to give opening talk at Regenerative Design 2026

TED Talk speaker, founder of radical design studio IBUKU and the designer behind some of the most extraordinary structures in the world, will kick off the events programme at Regenerative Design 2026 with a keynote talk on the morning of Monday 5th October.

BUKU founder Elora Hardy.

Elora Hardy, TED Talk speaker and founder of radical design studio IBUKU, will deliver the keynote talk at Paradigm shift: a new mindset for a regenerative world, the opening event of Regenerative Design 2026, which takes place at the Building Centre on Store Street in central London from 8.30-11.30am on Monday 5th October.

Raised in Bali, Elora was inspired by the highly skilled local craftsmen as well as the jewellery designed by her parents, John and Cynthia Hardy. She spent 14 years of her young adult life in the United States, where she received a degree in fine arts and went on to New York City to design prints for Donna Karan that would walk the world’s runways.

In 2010, Elora left her successful career in the fashion world to carry on the incredible work of the design-build team that created the world-renowned Green School in Bali, a private educational institution founded by John Hardy to promote sustainability through learning in a natural environment. She reconnected with the culture and landscape that she loves and today continues to cultivate Balinese artisans alongside innovative designers and architects with the goal of making Bali a global centre for sustainable design and bringing those designs to the rest of the world.

The Arc gymnasium at the Green School Bali. Photograph by Tommaso Riva.

Her practice, IBUKU – a team of 25 young designers, architects and engineers exploring groundbreaking ways to use bamboo in construction – has built over 60 bamboo structures in Bali, Indonesia, and around the region, including the Green School, Green Village, Sharma Springs, and Bambu Indah Hotel. Upcoming projects are underway in West Africa, Lombok, and Bali.

IBUKU’s work at the Green School includes The Arc gymnasium, an extraordinary structure with an organic form and structural system informed by natural systems, in particular the way our ribcages are held in place by the tension from an outer layer of muscle and skin. Designed in collaboration with bamboo architect Jörg Stamm and structural engineering firm Atelier One, the lightweight structure features 14-metre-high arches that are connected by anticlastic gridshells that curve in two directions to create a robust, tensioned structure that supports a complex double-curved roof made entirely from bamboo.

From left to right: Ivan Jovanovic, Duncan Baker Brown, Marian Garfield and Amin Taha.

Hardy will be joined by leading names from across the industry, including:

Ivan Jovanovic, Director Sustainability and Environmental Design at Atelier Ten
Duncan Baker Brown, Founder and Director of BakerBrown Studio
Marian Garfield, Director of Sustainability at Heidelberg Materials UK and
Amin Taha, Founder and Director of Groupwork

Launched by Architecture Today, Regenerative Design 2026 is a month-long programme of exhibitions and events that takes place at the Building Centre throughout October 2026.