When Margo Najera tells most people about the plans she has for her new house, they give her a puzzled look.
The reason for their confusion and disbelief: Najera, a 58-year-old Marion County resident, is building her house out of straw. Although likely to invoke images of three pigs and a wolf, straw buildings are not simply part of a fairy tale world.
Najera is one of hundreds of people in the United States and thousands more worldwide who are joining the push toward alternative housing methods. Architects and residents like Najera see straw as a way to build more efficiently using fewer resources and using resources that are less processed and easier to replenish.
The buzzword in architecture is sustainability, a catch-all phrase that means living in such a way that a person uses as little energy and produces as little waste as possible. Building with straw fits these criteria perfectly.
This trend is only beginning to happen because people won't often change their habits until it's in their best economic interest, said Tim Gray, Ball State University assistant architecture professor.
As the price of gas and the uncertainty of a steady oil supply increase, John Motloch, Ball State landscape architecture professor, said Americans will begin to turn to more efficient methods of living.
Joe Davis, principal of Indiana Natural Builders, a design firm specializing in straw bale construction, said straw becomes important because its greatest economic benefit is the money it saves residents in heating and cooling bills. Straw buildings are three times more insulated than conventional houses.
Joyce Coppinger, editor of The Last Straw, a straw building newsletter, said the temperature of a straw house stays relatively constant at around 60 degrees throughout the year, meaning inhabitants don't necessarily need to have furnaces or air conditioners.
Another benefit of straw is its abundance and low cost. Straw is the part of the plant left over in fields when the wheat and other grain crops are harvested. It is much easier to replenish year after year than wood. Conversation about straw buildings tends to conjure up thoughts of simple, crude structures, but only the walls are made of straw and can be covered with all kinds of exteriors. Gray said some homeowners have asked to have mansions made out of straw, which though possible, defeats some of the purpose of building more efficiently.
Although straw buildings date back hundreds of years, with long-standing examples present in Europe and the plain states in the U.S., David Arkin, owner of a California-based architecture firm that works extensively with straw buildings, said the renaissance of straw-bale construction started in the mid-1980s. The first 10 to 15 years of the movement were spent taking baby steps, with the last five to seven years seeing the most change.
"When I started [working with straw] in the 1990s, I could literally tell you where every straw building was in California, and now there are so many I have no idea," said Kelly Lerner, principal of the Washington-based architecture firm One World Design.
Lerner also works in the global straw community, with a heavy involvement in China in particular. When she started working in China in 1998 only one straw house existed, and now 650 exist in the country. Australia, Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands are other countries pushing building with straw.
Despite this growth of straw building, Davis said it still remains a niche market within the economy. Some experts, like Coppinger think straw is on its way into the mainstream and will break through for good within the next five years. Other experts said that building more efficiently and more environmentally friendly is on its way to becoming mainstream within the next two years, but they weren't sure that straw would be produced by large construction companies on a mass scale any time soon. Building with straw can be labor-and-time intensive and large companies make their profits by mass producing thousands of homes in a short period of time.
Regardless of whether large contractors begin using straw any time soon, the experts say it's obvious more and more people are getting involved. It's difficult to keep track of statistics because the number of straw houses is growing quickly and the houses are mainly produced by individuals, making them hard to track. Davis estimates Indiana has between a dozen and two dozen straw houses that he knows of, and he thinks that number will increase rapidly. In the past, he might see one to two new houses built every year, but this year he expects to see five to six houses built, with the total number of houses being built doubling every year after that.
Coppinger has the best gauge on the number of houses in the country because she operates a voluntary registration database for straw houses. According to the site, greenbuilder.com, the United States has 507 straw houses, with California leading the charge with 94. The actual number of straw houses is much larger, but because most homes are built by individuals, not companies, tracking all houses built is difficult.
Right now, because straw is not commonly used, Gray said people wanting to build with straw might face some resistance from city officials and builders when proposing a house. However, Davis said California is in the process of writing a building code specifically for straw houses.
Gray, who had a class build a straw house in Muncie last fall, said the next generation will drive this environmentally friendly building movement.
Graduate student Brian Pace, who worked on the house in Muncie, said students are still in the dark about straw houses, but he sees more young people getting involved with the general movement.
Najera sees the same trends at the library where she works. The library has purchased more books on building with straw during the past few years, and the entire collection is always checked out with a waiting list weeks long.
"The resources are out there and people interested in building with straw are going to find them," Najera said. "And as more people built their own homes and write about their experiences the trend will increase."
Najera said for her and her husband, being in a straw house gives them a feeling of comfort and peace. Being an avid student of the straw house movement, she's curious to see whether others will feel the same.
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