Product category:
Building Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
News Release from: amazonails | Subject: Strawbale building
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 17 December 2007
Hackney City Farm tops for sustainable
building
New Education Resource Centre at the Hackney City Farm is the latest strawbale building to be completed by amazonails.
The building was opened by Tommy Walsh, star of the BBC TV garden landscaping programme Ground Force, which transformed gardens across the UK and the USA during its 8-year run, will open the new centre Tommy is not only patron of Hackney City Farm, he also runs his own small building business in Hackney, specialising in hard landscaping - the part of garden creation which doesn't involve planting
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 30 Jan 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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The 50 sq metre building, built with a workforce of over 100 volunteers including the unemployed, asylum seekers, refugees and people from Adaction, Mind and the probation service, is made entirely from sustainable and recycled materials.
The strawbales came from a nearby farm, travelling a total of only 37 'straw miles'.
The wool roof insulation is from the farm's sheep.
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Apart from coppiced hazel from the City Farm Manager's own farm in Kent, much of the timber came from a 1930s 40ft teak boat, the keel being the ramp into the building, the sides are the classroom desks and the rest has provided the outside seating.
A large cross-beam in the new building was once part of the Norfolk sea defences.
All waste straw created during building was re-used on the farm for bedding.
Strawbale building pioneer Barbara Jones, director of the social enterprise amazonails which designed and supervised construction of the new building, said, "Strawbale building is no longer the experimental technique it was 10 years ago".
"Now, it is an emerging mainstream construction method that can deliver, with good design, better than a zero carbon footprint".
"No other material can match it for its insulation value, cost and sustainability, not to mention the fun involved in working with it.
The athlete's village at Olympics 2012 could be the ideal place to demonstrate to a worldwide audience all the advantages of building with straw bales, fitting well with the sustainability strategy of the Olympics Delivery Authority, and show the considerable expertise now built up in the UK".
Emma Appleton of the Hackney City Farm said, "With more and more people coming to help and learn at the farm we need a small indoor space to deliver workshops and training".
"We are always trying to find ways to reduce the environmental impact of the projects at the farm and ultimately want to be an environmental improvement centre".
"Therefore how and with what we build had to fit with these aims".
"We wanted to build something that everyone can be a part of, does not harm our environment in its construction and will be a good healthy space to work in".
"We decided to build our resource centre out of straw bales".
Strawbale building was brought to the UK by Barbara Jones of amazonails in 1995, and she helped to build the first strawbale building in the UK to have Planning Permission and Building Control approval, a loadbearing bungalow, in 1996.
The social enterprise amazonails has now been involved in the construction of more than 100 strawbale buildings in the UK, including the largest in the country and a spectacular education centre for the National Trust at Windermere.
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