Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
STRAW-BALE BUILDING: USING AN OLD TECHNOLOGY
TO PRESERVE THE ENVIRONMENT
KATHRYN HENDERSON
In the late 1800s, when Nebraska pioneers experienced a shortage of
locally available building materials they were able to draw on the recent
invention of modern hay-baling equipment, which enabled them to use
hay bales like building blocks to build everything from churches to houses.
1
Hence, hay-baling machines were then and are now part of what has been
termed in science and technology studies “heterogeneous engineering”
2
—the simultaneous co-construction of the network of people and things
that is co-produced while it facilitates the development and production of
a technology. Just as industrial design engineers must negotiate not only
technical aspects but the whole heterogeneous network of social and tech-
nical relationships, so must those who build homes with straw bales. They
must build a network that includes the farmers who grow crops that pro-
duce straw, the baling technology used to convert straw in the field to
building-grade bales, transportation systems and moisture-proof storage for
the bales, people to help put them together, designers to plan buildings,
building codes that will allow them to use the technology, local knowledge
of how to put all these elements together, and a motivation for going to so
much trouble. The motivation may be aesthetic and/or may be a philoso-
phy that articulates that this is worth doing for individual economic savings
along and for the ecological good of the community and the planet. This
essay examines the manner in which activists have built their tacit knowl-
edge and their networks, the barriers they have faced, and the social and
historical factors that have contributed to the renaissance of a way of build-
ing that is more than 100 years old.
This approach comes from the perspective in science and technology
studies that views technology and its design as mutually socially constructed
and as shaping society. Network analysis
3
more closely examines this shap-
ing during innovation and development of new technologies, including
