TO BUILD WITH STRAW: THE TRADITION

The use of straw, with all the technological meanings, was historically developed in local contexts with high levels of appropriateness and sustainability. Those technologies are characterized from reversibility processes, with a slowly energy regeneration. Today, the use of straw in construction can be read like an example of recycling ante litteram. The straw is an available material because it’s the waste of agriculture. Therefore, the use of straw stems from the landscape and the landscape returns to characterize the house and it can be used for roofs or for walls. The straw makes up the building with constructive matrices and it gains cultural meanings. The economy of the material is the basis of the constructive choice in certain poor contexts such as Africa or other no Mediterranean regions, where the material belongs to the site. In fact, this technique can be applied in different places, shared by the practice of farming, starting to those so-called primitive, semi-nomadic and nomads. In addition, the use of straw is carried out energetically balanced systems in the ratio of required requirements and offered performances. This makes it intrinsically sustainable and it demonstrates the principles of building as the fruit of man-nature relationship. Therefore this way of building belongs and shares by different cultures. This technique, defined in a reduced way “poor”, is characterized by a constructive technical execution really easy and it shows a reading of tradition of the people. They identify a frank, spontaneous architecture, in some ways sincere and ineluctable, with technology and tradition. At the basis of these considerations, the material shows a technical matrix really versatile, characterized by technologies with very simple features but it guarantees a very high performance level, beware of sustainability, with added value that the use of straw in construction creates continuity with the nature