Location: Karakayalar-Eskisehir-Turkey
Straw-bale construction is a building method that uses bales of straws (commonly wheat, rice, rye and oats straw) as structural elements, building insulation, or both. This construction method is commonly used in natural buildings or “brown” construction projects. Research has shown that straw-bale construction is a sustainable method for building, from the standpoint of both materials and energy needed for heating and cooling.*
This was one of the first collaboration between Merve Tekin, Ece Aslan, Matthieu Pedergnana and Julien Toprak Also many other friends… This project started as workshop during a architecture festival for students. For many of them it was weird building , they found this experience very different because of their impression about straw and mud. Their study has been only related to big shopping malls, community centers, etc… so as the time passed the participants started to leave one by one, only those who could build faith in the material stayed back ,handful of us enjoying with mud, fire, water, wind, stars. We camped in coppice forest around our strawbale house for one and half month to finish it and leave as an inspiration to the villagers who were taking care of us while building process.
Foundation was built by villagers, materials mostly provided by Anadolu University, water from village, clay and sand from around of us, food provided by university, villagers and us… So as collectively as always we could finished our inspirational, experimental half round straw bale house.
Thank you all 🙂
* Information borrowed from wikipedia
obaruhu.org 