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Architectural and construction firm Skillful Means designed a residence of straw bale construction to be built in Joshua Tree, California - a seismically active region located near many active faults. The main feature of the design is a great room with a vaulted roof. Tipping Mar + associates designed the building using the straw bales as structural building blocks to support all gravity and seismic loads. This contrasts with the traditional method of building wood post-and-beam structures with straw bales used for non-structural wall finishes and insulation. The roof vault is a composite structure of straw bales, welded wire mesh, and stucco. The design to resist shear loads was based on a truss mechanism borrowed from reinforced concrete design. Similarly, the design to resist flexural loads was based on a bending model from reinforced concrete design. In order to to validate the design concepts and convince a skeptical building department, a test was conducted on a full scale prototype "slice" of the vault. The test consisted of loading a four foot wide segment of the vault to simulate seismic effects. The structure remained stable as it was loaded well into the plastic deformation range. For details on the test and the design concepts, see Straw Bale Vault Testing in our Research Section. The project received a 2002 Excellence in Structural Engineering award from the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California. View the poster from this event, which also won an Award of Merit at the 2004 Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, sponsored by the US Green building Council. Additional information and images can be found at the Skillful Means website. See Lou Harrison Documentary for more information about the home's owner and more images of the structure. An article about this project was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Architect: Skillful Means Builders, Junction City, CA |
