In many ways, straw is the building material for our times: it’s a widely-available agricultural byproduct that is rapidly renewable, it’s comparable in insulative value to fossil fuel based insulation products, it has high tensile strength, and it has a long history of use in buildings. Despite all this, straw has not entered the modern toolkit of conventional building materials. This niche building material’s arrival into the mainstream may now be here in the form of prefabricated panels. As many designers and builders around the world turn from site-built straw bale walls to factory-built straw wall panels, we wanted to take stock of what’s going on and consider, what might come next?
The appeal of straw panels is that they mimic existing systems used by conventional builders. Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs) have been used for decades in high-performance buildings. And as we share in this issue, we are fast approaching a point where straw SIP production will meet or even exceed demand. Are straw panels the key to making low carbon and ecologically viable buildings accessible to mainstream development? We’re optimistic.
But technology is never neutral. Its creators and context inevitably influence the nature of a new thing. And just as important as the thing itself is making it with social and environmental justice in mind. What does that mean for straw panels? Some argue that panelization should follow the age-old open source lineage of natural building, whereas others see straw panels as needing the armature of corporate propriety, marketing, and testing to reach beyond the natural building community.
In this issue we explore where panel producers fall on this spectrum, the history of panels, the potential for straw building to find a greater reach, how to make one yourself, and where panelization might lead us.
In his 2010 essay “Who Will Build the Ark”, the late sage of ecological and social justice Mike Davis ponders what will carry us through the twin crises of climate and capital. To address these crises and achieve a more communal and greener urbanism he insists that “far more than any particular green design or technology”, we have to prioritize “public affluence over private wealth.” The dire need for these values is clear while wildfire smoke engulfs the nation, lakes run dry, and last November, Earth’s temperature briefly broke the 2°C limit. And so here we are looking up at wood framed monoliths of neatly rectangular straw with the tentative awe of Kubrick’s apes. Might these be the walls of the Ark?
