Straw wall panels with diagonal timber bracing

Commercial · [location]

Visitor Pavilion

A public building in compressed straw — braced panels, a long clear span, and a fire rating that satisfied the commercial code.

Type
Public / commercial
Fire resistance
[REI rating]
Structural code
EN 1990–1998
Completed
[year]

The build

Commercial work is where the certificates stop being a nicety. A public building has to satisfy reaction-to-fire and resistance classification under EN 13501, structural design to the full Eurocode suite, and the national energy regulation — all of which a rendered compressed-straw assembly is tested against.

Diagonal timber bracing inside the panels carries the racking load across the long elevations. The result is a building that reads as ordinary to everyone using it and stores several tonnes of CO₂ in its walls.

The project

Photographs from the build.

Straw panels meeting at a clean corner junction
Corner junctions
Timber beams, a straw bale and a finished straw panel
The materials
A finished building clad in compressed-straw panels
Finished
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