Architect Dylan Johnson with his longtime friend and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard designed and built a straw bale home in the suburbs of Ventura, California.
The straw is leftover from wheat, rice, or barley crops as the main structural element or insulation in a building. “There’s an enormous amount of money to be made with waste. The time is now to reimagine, not just housing, but everything else.” Chouinard says he’s been a fan of straw bale for 50 years and was excited by the opportunity to show people that a big piece of saving the planet is honoring our connection to nature.
With only five percent of the domestic straw production, you could have enough bales for one million 2,000-square-foot homes. The project Johnson and Chouinard completed spanned three years (as permitting took a while) and cost roughly the same as it would have had it been built…
Read full article originally published on naturalbuildingblog.com