Unique

The Arc aims to set new standards for sustainable building and education.

The Arc is the newest buil­ding on campus at the world-renowned Green School in Bali, Indo­nesia. The school has a 12 year history of brea­king boun­da­ries and expan­ding hori­zons.

The Arc is the newest bench­mark in that history, raising the bar for sustainable educa­tion around the world. The first buil­ding of its kind ever made.

Along the way, The Arc is a fanta­stic and distinctly multi­func­tional sports hall.

The Arc at Green School is built from a series of inter­sec­ting 14 meter tall bamboo arches span­ning 19 meters, inter­con­nected by anti­c­la­stic grids­hells which derive their strength from curving in two oppo­site direc­tions.

The design model was a mammal’s chest.

The Arc is a feat of engi­nee­ring; it required months of rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment and fine tuning of tailor-made details. The result is a refined design with unpar­al­leled beauty.

The Arc employs one of nature’s grea­test stra­te­gies for crea­ting large spaces with minimal struc­ture. Within a human ribcage, a series of ribs working in compres­sion are held in place by a tensioned flexible layer of muscle and skin.

This creates a thin but strong enca­se­ment for the lungs. In the case of The Arc, arches working in compres­sion are held in place by tensioned anti­c­la­stic grids­hells.

The Arc’s counterintuitive orchestration of geometry brings the structure into a state of equilibrium.

These fields of grids­hells appear to drape across the spaces between impos­sibly thin arches soaring over­head, giving a whimsy, inti­macy and beauty to the space. Although, the grids­hells appear to hang from the arches, they actually hold them up.

“The grids­hells use shape stiff­ness to form the roof enclo­sure and provide buck­ling resis­tance to the para­bolic arches. The two systems toge­ther create an unique and highly efficient struc­ture, able to flex under load allo­wing the struc­ture to redis­tri­bute weight, easing loca­lised forces on the arches.” says Neil Thomas from Atelier One.

The Arc’s coun­ter­in­tui­tive orchestra­tion of geometry brings the struc­ture into a state of equi­li­brium, which means a drama­ti­cally decreased neces­sity for struc­tural mate­rial. This also means an unpre­ce­dented inner volume with an impos­sibly thin struc­ture and without any distrac­ting trusses.