Many of the young builders appeared
to enjoy this compacting process the most, some of them taking off their
shoes and socks, climbing inside the forms, and delightedly stomping the
straw and clay into submission. Later, the forms were removed and re-nailed
higher up the wall so the process could begin again.
Boileau took a break from mixing
clay slip and supervising his construction crew to describe the process. In
a month or two, when the wall has dried – “when the grass stops growing out
of the wall” is how he will know it’s ready – clay plaster will be added
both inside and out. The result will look like adobe.
The structure is located on the grounds of the Bloorview MacMillan
Centre’s Bloorview site in Toronto, Ontario. The Bloorview MacMillan Centre’s
mandate is to enable kids with disabilities. The building will be a small, contemplative
space for clients of the centre and others from the community to use for story telling and
dream journeys. It will be a focal point of an integrated, outdoor, summer arts experience
called the Cosmic Bird Feeder. For four week periods during the summer, artists and
musicians provide a sanctuary for the imagination and creative energy of both special
needs and able-bodied kids.
The young construction workers were grade three students from Allan
Howard Waldorf School in Toronto, who spent the year studying the concept of
“home”. Before beginning to mix, stuff and compact, they ceremonially buried
tiny clay houses they had made in the walls of the building.
Boileau is a straw-clay enthusiast who has
helped build such structures in other countries, including a 4,500 square foot house in
the United States. He says that straw-clay (a term that is used interchangeably with
“light clay” to distinguish it from heavier forms of earth construction like
adobe) is a building material with unique properties.
It is a very low-impact and efficient material, site-made of
unprocessed earth and waste agricultural fiber. It is hard, durable, sculptable,
recyclable, and non-toxic. It is both a reasonably good insulator and a thermal storage
medium. It has excellent breatheability, handles water vapor well in a cold climate, and
it is resistant to rot, vermin and fire.
In various forms, straw-clay mixtures have a long history of
successful use in buildings in many parts of the world, notably Northern Europe. Boileau
knows about straw-clay structures in northern Europe that are over 1,000 years old. He
feels it is far superior to straw bale, although it does use more straw.
A former Toronto resident who left a high powered business career
for a new, simpler life in northern Ontario, he and partner Paul MacNab run Nor-Shore
Timberframers in Thessalon, Ontario. He learned the straw-clay technique from former
Sudbury resident Robert Laporte, having built many houses with him in the United States
and Europe. Laporte now owns The Econest Building Company in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the
major proponent of this type of construction in the U.S., and is responsible for getting
the State of New Mexico to write straw-clay wall construction into its building code.
Boileau wants to use this construction method in Canada, but has
found that local building inspectors in this country are not even interested in
considering it.
That’s too bad, because increasing numbers of
homeowners in other countries are rediscovering the many advantages of structures built
with natural materials like wood, straw and clay.
Wendy Priesnitz is the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist
with over 35 years of experience. She has also authored nine
books.
Read her
blog.
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It
was a cloudy June morning in north Toronto, Ontario. A couple of dozen kids
dressed in green garbage bags were gathered in a shady park pouring muddy
water over piles of straw like dressing onto a salad, then tossing the straw
around until both kids and clay were coated with the clay slip. A creative
way to dampen pre-summer break energy? A devious plot to sell laundry
detergent?
