Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
opposition, lived happily in the house for 25 years until her death. Scott also
reports that she has noticeably lower utility bills than her neighbors.
Welsch estimated that more than 60 straw-bale buildings were put up in
the Sand Hills region, but a more recent inquiry by Matts Myhrman and
Judy Knox turned up only 28 straw-bale buildings. Exactly how many
straw-bale buildings may have been built in Nebraska between the 1890s
and the 1930s is not known.
The first Nebraska post-and-beam straw-bale building still standing in
good repair today was completed in 1938. In this technique, posts carry the
weight of the roof and straw bales are used for infill walls.
The late 1960s and the early 1970s saw an increase in both countercul-
ture and professional interest in innovative and vernacular building, often
using recycled or waste materials.
In 1974 Roger Welsch published a one-page illustrated article titled
“Baled Hay” in a topic of essays titled
Shelter.
The lore of straw-bale build-
ing credits this one short article, which was based on Welsch's research on
folk and vernacular Nebraska architecture, with doing more to launch the
straw-bale building revival than any other single factor.
THE EARLY DAYS OF THE STRAW-BALE RENAISSANCE
The 1970s was a period of questioning authority in all fields, including
architecture. It was also the period in which ecological concerns were
introduced to the public, and the period in which two groups that would
be important to the straw-bale movement of the 1990s set off in two dif-
ferent directions. The rebellious counterculture experimented with com-
munal living, with the growing of herbal remedies and organic foods,
and with the use of inexpensive, recycled, and found materials. Not only
was
Shelter
published during this period; so were Bernard Rudofsky's
Architecture without Architects
(which documented the beauty of indigenous
peoples' building with natural materials) and
Handmade Houses
by Art Boer-
ick and Barry Shapiro.
14
However, not all members of the baby-boom gen-
eration took the alternative path, and many who experimented with the
counterculture in the 1960s and the 1970s returned to the mainstream to
pursue lucrative careers. In the meantime, architectural innovators as well as
those who simply wanted to build shelter as cheaply as possible began
experimenting with straw bales as a building material, drawing on Welsh's
article.
