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The New Strawbale Home
October 29th, 2003 • 7 PM Book Signing • LA Eco-Village Eco-Home™ Network is collaborating with Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, South Coast Permaculture Guild, and the LA Eco-Village to sponsor a book signing of The New Strawbale Home, an exciting new book by Catherine Wanek. Catherine will be on hand at 7 PM on October 29th at LA Eco-Village, in the lobby of 117 Bimini Place, LA, CA, 90004. See review of this book on page 33. Sliding scale $3–$10 requested donation. Parking for the book signing is in the Von’s parking lot at the end of Bimini Place, south side of 2nd Street. Contact: (323) 662-5207 Mention strawbale building to most people and you get a quizzical smile and a little piggy joke. That’s changing as creative people looking for environmentally sound alternatives to “stick” buildings - that use acres of forest to build one residential home - build, educate and advocate for building with straw bales. Straw is what is left over after grains — such as wheat, rice, oats, barley, rye, flax and triticale — are harvested. It has been used for millenia as fiber reinforcement for cob, adobe and straw-clay homes. Straw bales are bunches of straw tied tightly with string or wire. Baling machines in the 1870’s provided straw bales that pioneers soon used to create temporary homes on the treeless plains. Rice and flax straw provide the best bales for rot resistance, but firm, dense rectangular tightly tied bales from any grain are suitable building material. Catherine Wanek, author of The New Strawbale Home, organized the building of a strawbale greenhouse in 1992 and has been an advocate ever since. She produced and directed the Building with Straw video series and spent five years publishing and editing The Last Straw Journal and coauthored The Art of Natural Building. Wanek’s new book, The New Strawbale Home, compiles floor plans and images from forty cutting-edge homes across North America, discussing varying climate considerations and essential design details. Chapters include information on budget matters, code compliance, siting and energy efficiency, structural systems, and finishing touches. It also offers valuable insights and hindsights of architects, contractors and owner/builders, and an extensive resource section. Though The New Strawbale Home is a practical book, an essential resource for anyone seriously interested in strawbale building, it is also a visual delight. Gorgeous and informative color photos and illustrations adorn virtually every page. I leafed through it first as a fascinating picture book, filling my consciousness with images of exquisitely planet-and-human-nurturing homes of surprising diversity of design. It amply answers the question, “What does a strawbale house look like?” Evidently, “anything you want!” Strawbale building resources at the back of The New Strawbale Home book include a two page list of architects/designers, one page of builders, and several listings each of consultants, engineers, organizations, books, videos and workshops, internet resources, 2 listings each of home plans and publications and 1 each for plastering and product resources. Seven strawbale buildings open to the public are also listed. —Julia Russell |
