This Ancient Building Material is Making a Comeback
Date Posted: December 19, 2024
Posted In: Discussion,
From Fast Company: The idea of a straw building might bring to mind a medieval homestead, or perhaps the fairy-tale dwelling of The Three Little Pigs. Used since the 19th century—typically as a rural, rustic building material—straw has been a DIY solution for affordable, earth-friendly construction. But a new wave of contemporary straw designs, as well as more industrial-scale efforts to expand the availability of straw as a building material, have modernized this traditional method of making a home.
In Slovakia, EcoCocon, a company that manufactures prefab straw panels, just opened a new factory a month and a half ago built out of its own product. The automated factory showcases EcoCocon’s modular, straw-based construction system, as well as striking wooden trusses that suggest straw panels could play a role in building out warehouses and other large facilities.
“Literally, you put in straws, plywood, and a pack of screws on one end, and then on the other end, you have the finished product,” says Peter Jensen, a representative for EcoCocon in the U.S., about his firm’s new factory. “You don’t have any people involved in between.”
Considering the challenges facing architects who want to curtail carbon emissions in new buildings, straw offers a compelling case. Made from agricultural waste, straw walls sequester significant carbon — about 1.5 pounds for every pound used, before factoring in material transport —and can even be composted when knocked down. Some researchers have theorized that building with these types of biomaterials could turn buildings into carbon sinks, instead of the source of roughly 40% of global carbon emissions.