BROOKINGS, S.D. -- How far would you go to get a house that only costs $1.25 a day to heat in the winter? Better question: Would you live in a house built with straw bales? That idea, which began in ...

Straw panels were visible inside the wood framing during construction of Aska’s Animal Haus in Victor, Idaho. (Paul Lavold) Aska’s Animal Haus sits on the family’s property in Victor, Idaho, where the ...

"I want it to look very conventional. People who think about straw-bale houses think they're very hippie or very unconventional," said Wolff, who runs an interior design business, Design Council. But ...

While the idea of building with straw bales is not new, the eco-friendly approach to building has been gaining interest in the past 15 years. In the low-tech method, bales of straw are typically ...

Richard Venberg owned a custom furniture/cabinet shop in Colorado when he took a major step toward becoming an architect and one of Minnesota’s leading advocates of straw-bale construction. “Basically ...

When Mike Evans and his colleagues at the Tree of Life Nursery near San Juan Capistrano, Calif., began constructing some of their buildings in straw more than 10 years ago, they had good reasons: · ...

Interior designer Marcia Wolff wanted a house that's energy-efficient, ecologically sensitive, fire-resistant and, above all, beautiful. So she chose a building material that might surprise some ...