Can we grow our house?

We looked at the concept of growing our house. We wanted to know if we could make a structure made from materials that we produced mostly on site. Our structure is composed of 4 basic components; Cottonwood trees, a thatch roof, straw bales, and earth bags. We will use the cottonwood as support for our walls, and materials for our roof. The straw bales and earth bags will provide our walls and foundation.

The Cottonwood trees (Souixland Cottonwood) seemed appropriate for this design because of their ability to grow quickly. They are also inexpensive to acquire and have little to no maintenance associated with growing them. Initially we will plant an outline of our outside structure and inner walls, as well as additional trees for extra timber. The timber will be used to make trusses for our thatch roof. The materials for our thatch roof can easily be grown on site.

Straw bale walls were incorporated because straw can easily be grown and harvested on site. It is a structure that provides excellent thermal ratings, which is appropriate for Pullman winters and summers. The straw walls are also easy to maintain in the event of compression from growing trees. Any cracks or dips in a wall can easily be cut out and replaced. The earth bags will be used to provide a foundation to keep the bales off of the ground. The bags are also a good tool because they will not need cement or other industrial products.

The overall point of this design was to build with materials that we have grown; we also wanted our building to be reusable and sustainable over time. When the building has outlasted its lifetime we can recycle parts of our structure to build a new structure.

Josh GileMisha Manuchehri

Update on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 4:08PM by Jessica Fuller

INTUITIVE Rankings for STRUCTURE submissions through the lens of WATER:

Grade: -8

Rank: 17th

Comments

[Cassandra Tyler]

You should check out Mitchell Joachim. He heads a division at MIT that is studying growing houses, and has some very interesting video lectures and images about it. The Smart Cities group at MIT also has some other interesting transportation ideas that don't apply directly to growing houses, but are also interesting concerning development.

[Michael Wolcott]

Nice ideas. I liked that you developed some ideas of plants and plant materials for the different components. What type of building architecture might this be most amenable to this concept? Are there different functions that might not need to move (ie trees are fairly permanent) but could take frequent maintenance since these structures might suffer from durability.

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