Explore - Straw Bale

Boulder, Colorado, straddles a dynamic geographical border where miles of Rocky Mountains descend into flat plains that stretch all the way to the Appalachians. With four picture-perfect seasons...

When Anders Stokholm asked his old friend Felix Jerusalem to design his family’s new home in Eschenz, a northern Swiss village on the Rhine River and Untersee Lake, the client and architect agreed...

Most deserts are dry and dusty expanses of blue skies, bleached soil, and rulerflat horizons. The Colorado Plateau is not one of them. This is a land of stunning contradictions, where thousand-foot...

When the Charlottesville Waldorf School bought 13 undeveloped acres outside Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2002, the idea was simply to build a permanent home for the school’s 130 students,...

In the Napa Valley, one sustainable residence elegantly demonstrates straw bale technology.

How an unfussy, nearly zero-energy family home in Santa Cruz, California, wound up with hay bales in the walls, a state-of-the-art heat pump system, and six very happy residents.

When it comes to ecologically minded building materials, straw bales are among the kindest (they involve repurposing waste material from the grain growing industry). And lest you fear the outcome...