What bugs me about projects like this, is that they're being presented as 'sustainable' while they're the antithesis of that. If everybody would want to live like that, there wouldn't be enough room, let alone large, undisturbed areas for forests or agriculture; plus this house may have cost the builder only 5000 pounds (if you don't count the land), but that's only possible when it's a one-of-a-kind project. If you'd have to take into account the supply network needed to build a house like this, and live in it, to a reasonably comfortable standard (meaning, at the very least: warm, dry, no vermin inside, access to sewer and running water), it would become a lot more expensive, if not downright impossible.
I get the room part, but it cost him 5000 pounds because he built it out of logs and straw bales. There's not really a massive supply network needed for that sort of thing.
Also, your idea of a decent house is (obviously) not necessarily his idea of a decent house (eg. he has a composting toilet), but it looks pretty warm and dry and vermin free to me.
anthonyb is saying that logs and stray bales are available in large quantities. And he's right, there's no issue of scale here, other than labor. I have family who have built straw houses and they're cheap, straw is very plentiful, and you really can't tell the difference from a traditional drywall/fiberglass insulation home (it wasn't stylized like this one).
The only thing I see being an issue with the house from the article is the composting toilet. However, running a sewer to this style of house is no different than running a sewer to a traditional house.
It's more than just the building material. I live in a 65 story building..8 units per floor (I'm sure it thins out near the top though). How many people per sqft of land do you think we take? How much would be taken by free-standing (single) homes?
How much do you think we save in heating and cooling given that only 2 out of 4 walls are exposed (and in some apartments, it might be 1/4)?
If I wasn't tired, I'd look it up, but I have to imagine that apartment-style "dense" living, is way more sustainable than almost any type of house.
I have seen a few studies that suggest New York City is the most environmentally friendly place to live in the US. But, mostly it comes down to transportation costs. And being that close to a harbor is actually a huge net gain.
It seems your issue is with the concept of single family homes and urban sprawl, not this particular method of building. That's a bit of a different issue -- many people don't want to live in the middle of a city (such as myself: I'm on a rather large lot in a 4 bedroom home)
It's true that high density housing is efficient, but if you are going to build a single family home, strawbale is a great way to do it.
I don't mean to rant on you, but I do like having this conversation :)
I don't think limiting what we view as sustainable to only the things we want is being reasonable. Sure, there's degrees of sustainability, and we can talk about it in those terms. But, when I look at the world, I no longer believe that we are necessarily entitled to things that we want. Greeks, for example, would like to continue living well beyond their financial means. Should they be allowed to simply because they wish for it?
We have a good system to measure the financial cost of thing. So, at the very least, what you want is something you need to be able to afford (although that plays to the disadvantage of the truly poor). However, there are few checks in places for the social costs, and even fewer for the environmental cost.
So while you want to live in a big house, and you can afford it, do you have a greater social responsibility? Or, put differently (and possibility unfairly), what impact would it have if the considerable number of people who lived in such a dwelling moved to something more sustainable?
Actually it would be very different to run a sewer to this house than to a traditional house.
When you are piping large amounts of raw sewage around you need strict rules to protect people, property and the environment. So now you need to get it up to code, and pay trained people to check that it complies.
Straw is a promising material but I think we've already tried harvesting logs in "large quantities" and it hasn't worked out perfectly.
As I said, I have people in my family who have built strawbale houses to code (California code including earthquake provisions, no less). The stylized aspect is distinct from the strawbale and inset-in-land aspect.
Regarding logs, I'm currently sitting in a house with wood framing in the suburbs, and every house around me as far as I can see is also framed with wood.
