Castanea Project The Castanea Community house is the largest straw bale building designed by Ecoville ArchiTechs.  Castanea, Latin for chestnut, is a group of young adults, some with children, that have formed a community whose mission is to grow food for the people in their neighborhood, which they are already doing to an impressive degree in the South Chestnut Hill area of Nashville.  They meet every evening to break bread together at a communal meal often welcoming...

Straw bale walls pass earthquake test Straw bale construction has attributes that often seem counterintuitive. Fire resistance for instance.  Few people would have imagined that straw bales were class ‘A’ fire resistive construction just as few would have imagined that a plastered straw bale wall was a 2 hour fire wall. Others could be that it is rot resistant, highly insulative and structural. Yes, straw bales are structural and more than that they are able to withstand an...