11/24/2025
How do we take as much carbon as we can out of the atmosphere and sequester it in our buildings? One of the best ways (at about 128-165 kgC02/m3) is to stuff our buildings with locally produced rice straw!
We are working together with our colleagues at and to advance the methods for streamlining straw bale construction in concert with more conventional building methods. .architect we want to bring strawbale into a modern, place-based design aesthetic that takes advantage of its unitary/modular nature to make beautiful, simple forms. Our Strawbale ADU #1 project is currently under construction in Walnut Creek where we are using a technique called Bale-on-End-Between-Studs (BOEBS) originally developed by fellow CASBA members .dasarchitects and .
BOEBS takes advantage of many of the properties of straw bales and marries them with conventional framing techniques familiar to residential builders. Typical 2x6 studs walls are built at 24” OC with plywood sheathing and waterproofing on the exterior. From the plywood to the exterior this is a normal vapor-open construction method. On the inside, straw bales are stacked vertically and rammed between the studs. Lime or clay plaster is applied to the inside of the straw bales, creating an 18” thick wall.
We are streamlining the construction further by designing the bale walls as long continuous mass forms on-module with the size of a typical bale, with windows, plumbing, and electrical placed in the conventionally framed walls wherever possible. We are also experimenting with a second layer of 2x4 studs on the interior to allow for easier plastering, and detailing the edges with wood casing to eliminate labor intensive rounded corners.
By making strawbale construction less labor intensive and more familiar to conventional builders we can broaden its appeal and therefore ability to sequester substantial amounts of carbon.
