Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
New Mexico, and Texas have straw-bale building codes, and a movement is
afoot to create a national straw-bale building code. A certain amount of
testing has been conducted to lend scientific measurement to the body of
data supporting the claims of durability and high insulation value for
straw-bale construction. Straw-bale web sites have proliferated to the point
that one site has indexed them alphabetically. Straw bales have been
employed in at least one commercial development in Arizona and a few
contractors have built conventional-appearing homes on speculation using
straw bales. All this suggests that straw-bale construction is moving toward
the mainstream.Though history reveals some of the factors contributing to
this, it is not the whole story. Ethnographic field work and participant
observation with those building straw-bale homes begin to reveal the
answers to the question “Why now?” What combination of technical,
material, cultural, economic, and human factors create and are created by
this network that is able to successfully build with a low-status technology
from 100 years ago?
ON AND OFF THE GRID: ECONOMICS AND BABY BOOMERS, THEN AND
NOW
The obvious place to start in linking this history to the contemporary
straw-bale network of people, things, and intangibles is to ask “Who builds
a straw-bale house?”The second question is “Why do they build with straw
bale?” Interestingly, it is often members of the baby-boom generation who
came to adulthood in the status-quo-questioning era of the 1960s and the
1970s who are building homes and businesses in this new medium. More-
over, straw bale is a technique that seemingly reunites members of that gen-
eration who chose different directions in their youth.Those who took the
counterculture road may or may not have university educations but have
experimented in various alternative approaches to building and living,
developing skills and knowledge in using alternative materials and tech-
niques that are workable and affordable. Those who used their educations
to pursue careers in more traditional lifestyles are now in their financial
maturity and able to afford to build in a manner less dependent on com-
mercial financing. Some individuals are “crossovers” who developed suffi-
ciently marketable skills in alternative environments. In most cases they are
individuals, of any age, seeking either to build their own home or to build
for others as an expression of conscientious values.That many are individ-
