NEW FRAMEWORKS’ SEED STRATEGY
Natural building frequently plays on the lines between contracting and education. From small, project-based bale-raisings and plaster parties to established schools and structured programs like Yestermorrow Design Build School, the now-closed Endeavour Centre and action-learning projects like Community Rebuilds, the field of natural building has been forged in this nexus between practice and theory, professional and volunteer/novice. New Frameworks, based in Essex Junction, Vermont, launched the Seed Strategy in 2024 to train start- ups in the young, but growing, structural straw panel industry, and to create an ongoing network of support to promote success, shared resources and mutual aid.
The Straw Building Turn in Construction
New Frameworks’ practices have often played at those edges and on such bridges over the last 20+ years. We have created curricula for professionals and motivated amateurs in building science, natural building, applied climate science in architecture, engineering, and construction (the AEC industry), social justice, anti-racism, feminist theory, and alternative economics over the past 25 years in a variety of settings, most frequently incorporating a hands-on element to the learning process. We’ve navigated the challenging waters of mixing general contracting with teaching by designing, directing, and instructing Yestermorrow Design Build School’s Natural Building Intensive program for over a decade. In 2019 we were asked to deliver the Keynote address with Chris Magwood at the Northeastern Sustainable Energy Association’s annual Building Energy Boston conference, which we have been told by numerous colleagues effectively shifted the tide in that corner of the AEC industry toward understanding the immense impact of embodied carbon, particularly in the building industry, leading to significant change in many members’ practices. By far the most impactful moments for us have consisted of working with other AEC industry professionals to consider and take seriously natural building as a viable and critical climate response strategy. Everyone talks about “workforce development” these days, and training existing AEC practitioners on climate-friendly practices is a key step to make a meaningful positive climate impact. 54 As the irrefutableness of the human-created climate crisis becomes ever more clear, and the AEC industry looks for experts and solutions, many are now turning to natural building practitioners for information on climate-friendly materials and their use. Leading research and strategic organizations, like the United Nations are also recognizing the importance of biogenic materials as a key part of the solution.. For decades natural builders have been considered barely legitimate, –fringe at best, laughable at worst– by our conventional colleagues. These same tenacious builders now hold critical and practical experience in plant-based and earth- based construction. As the recent UN Report “Building Materials & the Climate: Constructing a New Future” calls for, we must rapidly adopt these practices across the globe. The time is now to rapidly and effectively deploy and train other industry professionals in these once-overlooked skills. Within the crisis, we discover opportunities. The opportunity lies not just with what building methods we will teach, but with how we will teach them. We are poised to impact not just the technical approach to construction, but a social and ecological one. Part of what attracts people to straw building is the tactile and sensory experience and opportunity to be in greater connection to nature while creating shelter. It’s not all 100% pleasant sensations; we who work with straw daily share our jokes about “strotch” aka “straw crotch” because the often dusty pieces that result from working with straw have a way of inserting themselves into the most uncomfortable of places. And, we also have eaten the juiciest ruby-red strawberries grown under mulch that came from the “waste” of a house we built. We’ve smelled the sweet smell of the dry (under 15% moisture content) straw and watched movies in a makeshift straw bale theater (with the best acoustics) in the middle of a worksite we were camping on. We’ve watched cereal grain crops grow tall in the field and be harvested first for grain to feed our neighbors, and second to harvest the hollow strong stalk we know as straw. We’ve felt the visceral connections in our bodies to land and place, to plant relatives, and the gifts they give us of both nourishment and shelter. I believe this embodiment, and the connection to other beings contained within it, is a key part of what is needed for the new generation of tradespeople on a healed planet.
The harms of the often toxic masculinist, racist, sexist, misogynist, cis heterosexist, ableist, and capitalist, etc. culture in the construction industry turn many of us off from that work and create barriers to scaling a new climate corps of shelter- creators. In its most general meaning, corps is a group trained for action – which is exactly what we need right now to turn the tide and slow, then reverse, accelerating the climate crisis. As a multi- racial, queer- and women-owned worker cooperative committed to climate justice, New Frameworks has always attracted those marginalized by the mainstream AEC industry – folks of color, LGBTQ+ people, women and femme-of-center people, folks with seen & unseen disabilities, immigrants and Indigenous people, and also those typically accepted into the mainstream but who long for a more inclusive culture and a better world for all. As a worker cooperative, we build leadership and provide meaningful ownership in the work to our members. We need all of us, working together in empowered ways, to create the transformation needed in our AEC industry to attract, train, and retain workers ready to build a healthy future on this planet.
Sharing Tools for Climate Action
In 2023 and 2024 we responded to other builders, designers, and manufacturers coming to us saying, “I see the climate, social, and industry benefits of straw panel manufacturing with the business model you have created. Help me to do what you’re doing.” We created the Seed Program and Seed Network as a comprehensive answer to this call: the deep urgency people in the AEC industry are feeling to level up our practices to truly meet the climate crisis and provide not just lesser harm, but more good and practical solutions, immediately. The Seed Program has a 3-year schedule. Year 1 consists of intensive startup support covering cooperative business development, technical shop setup, equipment, marketing, sales, fabrication, transportation, installation, and more. Years 2 & 3 then become ongoing support for the individuals, and beyond that, we aim to grow into a mycelial network of designers, producers, and installers who can provide mutual support, share innovations, and leverage resources. The straw panel design production is intentionally simple and easy to grasp. We want a replicable light manufacturing approach that can be used by small producers everywhere with relatively low barriers to entry. Regionally rooted, small “D” democratic access to climate-restorative building practices is integral to scaling this immediately to meet the rising climate and housing crises. That said, building robust processes and structures that will last (a key function to delivering on the promise of carbon drawdown & carbon storage is the building’s durability); will be safe for all who use them; and that will earn public trust requires meticulous engineering, rigorous building science, natural building craft, and resilient business design. They must merge the best of what we collectively have learned in multiple disciplines: manufacturing, engineering, architecture, agriculture, general contracting and construction, natural building, education, and more. And these practices must level it all up and spread it quickly. Building off of the basis that Chris Magwood and Jen Feigin shared with us from their various ventures into prefabricated straw building in Canada, New Frameworks transformed into the U.S.’s first straw panel manufacturer. We first focused on development & exploration in 2015/2016, prototyped in 2018, and built the first straw panel passive house project in 2019. In the Seed Program, we’re sharing all the foundational work we did as entrepreneurs with a fearless drive to build a community of practice to immediately address global building challenges – with builders, designers, and manufacturers ready to implement and collectively carry the work forward. Join the movement – we welcome you! For more information on the Seed Program, visit the New Frameworks website’s Advocacy page
SEED Collaborative participants
