Towards a New Organic Architecture

Today I was reading an article on Oak - as building material. The article mentioned that in Europe many oak forests were planted for the making ships. For centuries we had evolved extraordinary craftsmanship in naval architecture and the quality of the timber was of prime importance. With the industrial revolution, the supremacy of fuelled-powered ship and steel has eclipsed the 'oak tradition' and more recently air travel has become the dominant travel mode.

The following question came to me: how are we going to travel across great distances when fossil fuels will have become prohibitively expensive? Air travel might simply become a rare luxury and I suspect that there will be a come back to sailing. For wind-propelled travel is probably one of the most elegant and ingenious invention. It is possible that in hundred years from now most of the transcontinental travel will be done on the seas and that timber vessels will be back in full force. One important fact to remember though is that it takes a long time for trees to mature -- so we better get starting now.

Even if am totally wrong in my predictions, we will always be in need of good quality timber, so let us plant some oaks.

More and more people are talking about straw-bale construction and its merits as one of the most environmentally sound building materials. First of all, it is extremely available; it is a ‘waste’ byproduct of agriculture. Second of all it is biodegradable so at the end of its life it can be safely returned to the earth and will decompose very quickly. (If mixed with the garden/ kitchen waste it can even be transformed into valuable compost. Which other building material can you think of that will do that?) Thirdly, it forms the major bulk of the wall and does not require extra insulation. Also, it is extremely easy material to build with - one does not need specialised skills to build a wall made of bales. The construction technique can be learned in a week-end... And the list can go on...

I also know that straw-bale construction has short-comings. Straw can not be allowed to have prolonged contact with water and the availability of good quality bales (right density) can be an issue. As the wall need to breathe it is recommende that they are rendered either with lime of with a clay plaster. And these plasters can present some difficulties such as the slow curing of lime render and need of maintenance of a clay plaster. Finally, the bales come in a standard size and this can be rather limiting! Straw-bale construction is still in its infancy though, and it is bound to evolve quickly in the coming decades. It is my feeling that many of the difficulties that the material currently face can be easily improved on.

Having said all this, straw-bale construction remains a fringe material and it may take a long time to prove itself to the public at large. One of the main factor that may make it more popular is the energy crisis that our society is very likely going to face in the near future. As fossil fuel price will increase, energy intensive building technics may loose their supremacy and give way to more local and benign materials such as straw-bales.

I would encourage as many people as possible in the field of construction to consider this material and to experiment with it for I feel it has a lot of potential and may well become one of the most appropriate material for rural housing in the coming decades.

As the world is becoming more and more urbanised, we find ourselves surrounded by buildings. Most people spend most of their lives indoors - on average 85% in the so called developed world - and yet we have very little say about the quality of our built environment.

Our buildings are often quite elaborated and efficient, yet most lack 'soul'. Many traditional buildings, although more crude in construction and appearance tend to have "a quality with no name" (Christopher Alexander) -- and this is what we should consider of utmost importance when new buildings are put up. In these pages over the next few months, I am going to explore what makes 'good' architecture. Since I live in a rural area of England, I am going to focus more on what surrounds me. Rather than focusing on taste, style and personal preferences, I am going to attempt to look at timelessness and universally appreciated qualities of designs.