It leads like a golden road to the skeletal frame of Ken Geisen's and Laura Corbin's new house. With the help of Minneapolis architect Jonathan Query of the design company III AD, Geisen and Corbin obtained the state's first permit to build a strawbale residence and have been working on the house for the past four months. The construction style is part of a small but enthusiastic architectural and design movement taking root across the country. Baleheads, as strawbale enthusiasts often call themselves, embrace the movement as a cost-effective, environmentally sound alternative to conventional home building. The process also allows builders to inject some individuality into their dwellings.
Query sees baleheads as open-minded and receptive to change.
It's not a way of building that everybody's going to be fond of. There are those who like perfectly straight lines and the predictability of a wood surface. I don't think it's going to become a pervasive way of building, but I think it's going to have its own strength. Historically, strawbale has never been a dominant form of architecture. When land grants opened the prairie states to settlers, people began to move away from the tree-rich river valleys of the East and into the dry, grassy plains.