Home from Northern Swiss village

When Anders Stokholm friend invited Felix Jerusalem hisold new family home in Eschenz, a village in northern Switzerland on the Rhine and the design of submarines, has agreed to clients and architects, they do not want the old Roman objects buried in disturbed soil moist. But they wanted something modern and green. Jerusalem solution, the straw house, beautifully combining the old and new: The structure float above the ground is saturated on stilts – reference models in the field is used for thousands of years, based in Zurich Jerusalem . And with the exception of the concrete core, the whole house prefabricated panels, formaldehyde-free compressed straw.

The straw house is not Adobe or straw land home of the old school ball, though. The walls are made of wool sandwich board signs. Dense outer layers direct support function, with lighter layers between the creation of thermal insulation, were of average weight for the components used inside.

compressed straw is a better insulator than wood, and not Jerusalem fuel when it is compressed to this extent. There are also plenty of renewable resources: Compared to the years it takes for a mature tree can, straw filled in about three to four months – the time it takes to grow a box of cereal. Not much less than the time that the house of straw, which was completed in 2005, built just in time for the Stockholm set up to Christmas.

The entire structure is encased in cheap plastic corrugated translucent green – the stuff that you normally on the roof with a small shed – which makes the construction and materials as well as a visible contribution to home insulation. The unusual exterior adds an aesthetic bonus, when the sun shines through them, shadows in different ways on the interior walls.

This transparency Jerusalem believes that the first, the design is exposed contrary to popular home advice of plastic straw and straw with equity, availability and kitsch. “Andy Warhol made art out of trash him, and I think that is very similar,” assserts Jerusalem.

The budget of € 325,000 (about $ 475,000) was for Switzerland, notes and Jerusalem had been the intensive research and development on a new design prototypes are involved. Stay in the budget, is home to save on internal purposes, a “noble frame, heating and electrical lines run through pipes in the open.