The International Straw Building Conference 2016 was held 3-9 March in Canterbury, New Zealand. It was truly inspirational, with many passionate, knowledgeable and skilled people from around the world.
Super smart people here with some very clever ideas. Very refreshing to talk to all these people and share ideas with them.
Here are some of our highlights:
Craig White at Modcell (UK) pushing the boundaries of housing development. Incredible amount of very valuable research.
Barbara Jones at StrawWorks (UK) proving that you don’t need steel or concrete in your building to make it durable and leading the way with open-source straw bale detailing. Absolute wealth of knowledge direct from real experience.
David Eisenberg from DCAT (USA) talking about world-leading advances in straw bale building codes
… has pioneered the concept that the responsibility of safeguarding public health, safety and welfare inherently includes protecting future generations and the natural systems on the Earth that are our collective life support systems and the basis of our very existence
Richard Walker and Hugh Morris (NZ), talking about the results of their work into the performance of earth structures in earthquakes. Read their paper here. Also Verena Mader demonstrating her outstanding knowledge in earth building.
Stunning earth murals by Consuelo Miranda (Chile)
Emily Niehaus of Community Rebuilds (USA); changing the world for low income families with beautiful, low cost straw bale buildings… and providing life-long skills in the process
Steve Richards of the Jester Cafe demonstrating the virtue in ‘just doing it’.
Rosa Henderson of Sculpted Earth in Waiheke for pure unadulterated passion:
Kara Rosemeier of PHINZ for a fantastic summary of Passive House and its relationship to natural materials
and a special thanks to Sue Duff from Childcare@sue’s for providing unequalled support for us during the week!