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The Last Straw
by Sean Koenig
Listen to the sound of a card house falling. The deck I'm dealing with holds the key to affordable, ecologically-sound housing, but I face suits who cannot abide utopian dreaming. Turn the card over, however, and discover dozens of well-meaning eco-pioneers fending off reckless enthusiasm that could jeopardize their interests. So where do you stand, with those of the Now or those of the Soon, while the cards fall as they may?
This summer I wandered the desert on a baby-blue horse with no AC and found my prophets of earthen architecture secluded in the mountains of Arizona. Like most prophets, Bill and Athena Steen only reluctantly seize the pulpit to preach straw bale construction. With ancestry that reflects the vibrant tapestry of the Native American, Mexican, and European cultures in the Sonoran desert and five children in various stages of growing up and being born, the Steens are very content to stay close to their 40-acre homestead and learn from the land. They gladly reveal how to build aesthetically pleasing homes using local renewable resources, but generally shy away from attacking conventional architecture. Then you have unruly disciples like myself who are always mucking up the works because we See The Light, and we want the world lit. Now.
Unlike some prophets I could mention, the Steens actually documented their teachings in The Straw Bale House, a best selling natural building bible. Unfortunately, it may be too little too late. The straw bale movement remains obscure, and before it can shatter the plywood façade of status quo tract housing, building officials and contractors are scuttling the revolution with regulation. The majority of straw bale houses put up today are enviro-novelties, slathered in cement and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Steens, without the conforming influence of architectural degrees, are looking to a different clientele and application for straw bale. One of the over 30 houses they designed and built, for example, cost the elderly client less than $400. The 350-square-foot home incorporated all local and renewable resources and was erected in one weekend with labor provided by her family.
Incidentally, this example comes from the Steens' work in Mexico. In America we prefer that our indigent citizens die homeless rather than empower them to shelter themselves innovatively. That is why I want the change to happen Now, not Soon.
I thought U.Va. was uniquely poised to rescue this revolutionary housing alternative from reactionaries and obscurity. I believed this because last spring I took Environmental Choices, a class you should not leave U.Va. without taking. Taught by architecture dean William McDonough -- recipient of the nation's highest environmental honor, the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development -- the class made me believe in sustainable design, using intellect to leave the earth as good or better than we found it. I interviewed McDonough for
the February 19, 1998 issue of The Declaration,
primarily to ask him this one selfish question: "How can students become involved in what you are proposing, redesigning the world from the molecular level to the bio-region?" His response sounded unequivocal: Sign up at the Institute for Sustainable Design (ISD).
 Straw bale construction in Pomona, California Thus began the Greek tragedy known as my experience with the Institute. When I approached ISD director Kristan Mitchell last spring, she explained how many students like myself had come by looking to volunteer. Many U.Va. departments had called up inquiring about projects as well. But the institute had nothing to offer. "Is there any place for undergraduate involvement here at the institute?" I im-plored. "Well, we might need someone to do some filing or update the website" This I found unacceptable. So I gave up on the Institute and left for Arizona for the summer, where I became entangled with the straw bale movement. Arriving back on grounds I thought I held an ace. If the ISD couldn't come up with anything for me to do, then I would provide one myself: a student-run, student-staffed investigation into the sustainable nature of straw bale houses using McDonough's design principles. But Mitchell again found a way to thwart my offer. The Institute could not allow itself to be associated with independent student projects, or it might tarnish the center's reputation. Well, I countered, I wasn't planning to just slap an ISD label on my parade -- I expected a minimal amount of guidance in my research. At this point Mitchell's eyes lit up. She had me cornered. "This institute does not have the resources to support such a project." I think it is high time to examine why a prestigious institute which raised a generous $200,000 start-up grant two years ago, has failed to produce a single student project. With nothing on the horizon either. Mitchell responds by calling the ISD a "virtual institute" that provides grant work for dozens of faculty. The defenders of the Soon will contend that soon the center will have a staff, soon there will be student projects, and soon McDonough will be more involved with the ISD. But as you may have inferred, I cast my lot with the Now, and here is why the ISD has failed to "foster the development of creative new tools for sustainable design" or "be the preeminent global institution for advancing the sustainable buildings agenda." First, Mitchell has neither the experience nor the prestige to head a "preeminent global institution." A salary of $30,000 and lack of staff certainly did little to attract the type of leadership required, and in practice Mitchell acts as more of an administrative secretary than a policy maker. (I first met her as she fretted over which type of sandwich to bring McDonough for lunch). So what commodity does the Institute have to make it a global leader? In a word, McDonough -- but therein lies the second dilemma. Dean McDonough is far too busy to contribute to the institute. His obligations include deanship of the architecture school (albeit not for long, as he recently annouced that he would be stepping down at the end of his term), teaching classes, heading the globally renowned architecture firm McDonough + Partners, and spending time with his family. The institute ranks a distant fifth behind projects including PBS documentaries, designing the Nike world headquarters, and planning a sustainable town in Indiana. The university community shares the blame for failing to hold the ISD up for scrutiny. The Cavalier Daily has yet to profile the ISD, much less investigate it, and administrators steer clear of picking on McDonough's pet project. Organizationally, the Institute reports only to the Dean of the Architecture school (McDonough) and has a budget separate from the university or the School of architecture. The obscurity of the center has been largely self-imposed: Environmental Choices gave the ISD a captive audience of hundreds of students that was never tapped.  Straw bale house built by Bill and Athena Steen With the organizing power of the Institute lost I stand at a crossroads. I still believe strongly in both the potential of straw bale architecture and the design principles of sustainablility. I still think students have the potential to contribute to a field dominated by eco-elites. The rest of this article goes out to those who feel the same way. So why can't you build a house for $20,000 in America? What conditions conspired to make home ownership so outlandishly expensive that a lifetime of labor is often insufficient to pay for one? How did homes progress from community-built structures that returned to the earth as soil and stone to corporate-usurped ruins-in-waiting? The reasons are manifold, but most glaring are the legal and technical hurdles to home ownership. Legally, the government can be sued if citizens are injured by inferior homes, so the bar stands so high as to preclude the slightest chance of a structural failure in homes. Building codes are also very slow to recognize new techniques and even slower to adopt ones that are not standardized or sponsored by corporations. Technically, the complexity of the materials and methods used to make a house these days are so beyond the average American, so mechanized and capital intensive, that we believe only guild experts could possibly build homes. Unfortunately, going back to living in caves, as the argument is often posed, will never again meet our modern housing needs. Where a U.Va. straw bale project enters this debate between something old and something new is with something different, something blue (and orange). Our mission would be to examine the scientific and anecdotal evidence for the eco-efficiency of straw bale buildings and render this information visible to those in the building community. For example, in what climates and housing situations do straw bale buildings make sense? How can straw bale walls be integrated with roofs, foundations and plasters without eliminating their ability to be recycled as compost? McDonough's design principles harmonize well with the straw bale enterprise, emphasizing the techniques environmental benefits and uncovering its weaknesses. McDonough advocates the use of current solar energy, as opposed to nuclear and fossil fuel reserves that were generated by solar energy eons ago. Straw bale houses have low embodied energy, meaning that unlike materials like metal that have to be forged under extremely high temperatures and pressure, straw grows at ambient conditions (thankfully). Bales are also extremely insulating with an R value upwards of 50 -- your dorm wall likely has an R value around 10 -- so they require less energy to heat and cool. Passive solar and microclimate conditioning techniques are also easily integrated with straw bale design. McDonough also advocates the cycling of technical and organic nutrients, so that just like in nature the waste of one process or organism is the fuel for another. The low nutrient value for straw makes it an agricultural by-product that is burned to the tune of millions of tons a year, adding carbon dioxide and particulates to the atmosphere. Using straw in homes could put this potentially valuable resource into human use, and after the life cycle of the building the straw can be returned to the soil as compost. Straw bales are plastered with anything from clay to lime to cement or asphalt; using McDonough's perspective the more sustainable choices are quite clear. A final principle advocated by McDonough is respecting diversity and using local materials: one size definitely does not fit all, especially in something as personal as your home. A key aspect to this project, therefore, will be looking at when this technology is applicable. Clearly, building a straw bale house will make more sense in an agricultural zone than in a boreal forest, more sense where the climate is dry and less prone to natural disasters. Project ideas abound for students with a wide range of skills and interests. The economic considerations of straw bale house have never been studied. The opportunity costs of investing labor instead of money ought to be looked at. Examining the legal barriers to innovative buildings exceeds my expertise but perhaps not yours. And architects, the opportunity to design at leading edge of an architectural movement does not just prance through studio every day. All my cards are on the table, so ante up if you want in. Maybe if enough people express interest, we can accomplish the ISD's goal of "illustrating the environmental, social, and economic advantages of sustainable building technologies" ourselves. And we can do it Now. |
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