Picture an insulation crew rolling up to a job site in a box truck at 7am. The team unloads, installs, and they’re in and out in a day or two—which is key, because the drywallers are scheduled to start immediately. It’s efficient, repeatable, and is part of a tried and true assembly system. For us natural builders, the main rub here is that they’re dragging in carbon intensive and likely toxic materials into the home—or are they?
As natural builders we take local resource management very seriously but can miss the mark in efficiency and scalability. Conventional builders, on the other hand, have long mastered production efficiency but at an irrevocable cost to the environment and the health of workers and homeowners. Their profits are only possible with petroleum and pollution. These two bottom lines—planet or profit—used to be at odds with one another. But what we’re seeing now – with an influx of American-made plant fiber insulations, straw-panelization and prefabrication—is a renaissance in healthy home construction. Suddenly the choice between profit and planet and human health isn’t so stark.
We developed the StraBloc to embody the best of those two worlds—the mini panels are simply compressed straw and clay formed to fit into conventional stud framed walls. Last month our team showed up to our permitted ADU in Vancouver, WA in a U-Haul truck and unloaded 150 StraBlocs off of pallets. Some of us unloaded Blocs by hand into wheelbarrows, while our BlocSmiths went about filling the 24” on-center stud bays. In a couple of days, our plasterer was on site and we had base and scratch coats on the interior and exterior.
PROBLEM & SOLUTION
I started my own building journey with the EcoNest model of straw clay construction developed by Robert Laporte, who has spent decades refining and sharing innovative systems for efficient site built straw clay work. Our team at Placecraft Design & Build struggled to make those systems work in the Willamette Valley of Oregon and with the types of homes we wanted to build. For those working with straw clay, the problems are fairly universal:
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Long dry times make for impossible schedules & increase the risk of failure, particularly in the northwest
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The site infrastructure needed makes work on smaller city lots nearly infeasible
Like any good invention story, we launched our search for a solution in my backyard. We started with a 25 lbs / SF mix and incrementally worked our way into lighter mixes trying to find the balance of R-value and handling durability as well as ergonomic shapes and sizes. Our innovation from the beginning featured overlapping tabs to provide continuous insulation over the studs and keep the blocks from falling out. We dried these panels, the StraBlocs, and drove them down to Northern California. In about a week, we had an 80 SF timber frame bath house built and a straw clay wall assembly ready for plaster. We were a bit surprised by how well it all worked.
In the two years since, we’ve built another six backyard structures, which haven’t required building permits. We’ve honed in on a Bloc that is 5.5” thick x 22.5” tall x 22.5” wide and changed the recipe to increase R-value (we’re at R10.5 per Bloc). Accompanying this work has been a rethinking of our framing designs and modular assemblies to make installs smoother. The overall building production schedule is no different than conventional construction, because we dry the panels off-site in a controlled setting. These production and performance qualities help lower the risk of straw clay walls for architects and builders.
We’ve been careful not to lose touch with the community spirit that we fell in love with as natural builders. Every few weeks from April to October we open up our fabrication space, The Blockery, to the public and throw a BlocParty. These have become interactive salons where architects, builders, DIYers, non-profit leaders, and friends, neighbors, and family gather to pack our forms and chat about changing the world. The hand-packed nature of our operation keeps our process low-tech and assures a level of authentic sustainability that’s hard to verify with other products.
Early this year, we’ll have finished our first permitted residence using StraBlocs. This has been the most taxing, but most significant, outcome of our efforts over three years. We filed for a permit in June 2022 and received issuance in June 2023. This delay and our investment to navigate the permit process put tremendous strain on our small business—it’s no wonder so many good hearted natural builders choose to fly under the radar. It is damn hard to keep a business afloat through aggressive product research and development and navigating red tape, but getting projects permitted and completed in a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost is what will turn heads and make change.
Building departments and inspectors look for specified products that have official testing and listings. We should deliver that. Our Blocs are thermally tested, which helped our permit process. We then had to argue on the merits of StraBloc being of similar density to straw bale, which has been rated as a Class A material through fire and smoke testing. Municipalities aren’t the only folks that are looking for assurances through a trusted brand. Homeowners, contractors, and architects would all have an easier time requesting or specifying known, branded products. And once we’ve created this ease of access for StraBlocs, we can set out to fill the demand.
But we’re not going to make all those StraBlocs — you are. Or your local resource conscious fabricator/installer will make them with your help. We’re not interested in setting up a centralized behemoth manufacturing plant and shipping all over the country — that’s more of the same madness that got us into this mess. Skills and knowledge are much easier to ship. Our vision is to see a Blockery set up every 300 miles, then reduce that by half, then by half again. The cost is low, the principles are easy. We already have everything we need—and that’s each other.
What’s evolving at Placecraft is a business and building model that is available to other builders, DIYers, and affordable housing nonprofits. Together we can share in marketing and research, and allow for regional adaptations through trial and error in the permitting process. Our vision is one of local resiliency and creating a culture of land stewardship within our building community and beyond. We’re looking for partners on many levels:
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Folks to participate in our BlocParties
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Architects who want to design homes around the StraBlocs
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Homeowners interested in being early adopters
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Other natural builders wanting to collaborate and carry on this work in their regions through a franchise model
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And of course, folks wanting to fund our research to help develop building solutions for a world gripped by climate crisis
We devised the StraBloc because in-situ straw clay work wasn’t feasible for our region and buildings. On larger projects a traditional stacked bale assembly or a straw-SIP might be the better choice. We need all options on the table and as many people dedicated to practicing, improving, innovating and, in the true spirit of natural building, sharing.
Placecraft’s Blockery sits on the banks of the Willamette River at a sprawling art and ecology incubator space on an underutilized, greyfield site. It’s fitting to be here: exploring a future with human-scaled, nature-oriented fabrication for our homes on top of busted up slabs and rails from an earlier industrial era that set us down a perilous path. The iconic St. Johns Bridge soars across the river and disappears into the northside of the Tualatin Mountains—a wildland spared from development by a park. This scene is a nice parallel for my generation of natural builders. Many of us are working within the conventions of our petroleum past but with an eye to the natural world. This moment calls for bridge technologies to bring natural wall systems into the mainstream and to bring our homes and ourselves into closer harmony with the natural world.
Across the river we see an untamed mix of second growth fir and hemlock. A few faint flashes of yellow maple and alder leaves hold on, but winter is here. Nature will cycle on, indifferent to our success. I, for one, see a bright spring when we will gather once again as a community, making shelter together. I hope you’ll join us.
OLIVER OGDEN is exploring how local, low-tech and scalable plant-based home enclosure systems can promote a culture of environmental stewardship and curb climate change. He is the founder of Placecraft Design & Build based in Portland, OR and the principal innovator of the StraBloc.
