In California, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of sustainability focused outdoor brand Patagonia, is living in a straw house designed by architect Dylan Johnson.
The pair tells Dwell that straw is a promising and ecofriendly alternative to conventional building materials. “In the ’60s, people were talking a lot about straw bale houses and mud houses, adobe, stuff like that… but that kind of disappeared,” Chouinard said. “And I have a habit of getting interested in something—and the idea kind of sticks in the back of my head for years and years and decades even, and then it just kind of erupts.”
The Ventura, California, home uses post-and-beam framing filled with straw bales, a waste product from nearby rice farms. The idea is poised to catch on, with California adding a Straw Building Code in 2019. “With less than 5% of all the rice straw that we produce each year in this country, we can build a million 2,000-square-foot homes,” Chouinard adds.
The Chouinard family made deadlines in 2022 when they donated Patagonia—then valued at $3 billion—to a trust and a nonprofit group to use the profits to fight climate change.