Straw Studio

There’s no better way to truly understand and connect with your environment than by actively participating in the process of making.

We recognise the climate emergency and the significant changes needed in the built environment to achieve net-zero emissions promptly. As a practice, we are committed to advancing sustainable modern architecture. With the opportunity to construct a new outbuilding as our meeting room, we used this project as a testbed for natural building materials.

Our straw room is a self-build project that illustrates the empowerment that comes from using natural materials, enabling communities to shape their environments and vernaculars based on locally available resources. This small studio meeting space is constructed with load-bearing straw bales, lime-rendered on both the interior and exterior surfaces. This technique results in a building envelope with high thermal mass, excellent U-values, and outstanding acoustic qualities.

All materials used—straw, sheep’s wool, lime render, and timber—are low in embodied energy, fostering an architecture that promotes health and well-being compared to traditional construction methods. Straw bale construction allows for a significantly carbon-negative building due to the carbon stored in the walls and the low embodied energy of all materials. In the UK, approximately 5.6 million tonnes of straw are ploughed back into the ground each year, which could provide enough material to build roughly 640,000 homes.