Housing

A Log builder’s Handbook
By Drew Langsner
Available from Rodale Press
ISBN 0-87857-416-6 hardcover
ISBN 0-87857-419-0 paperback
This book is a thorough how-to manual filled with clear instructions and sound advice.

Bhartiya Vastu Gyan
Pgs. 176 (1996)
By Pt. Jagdish Prasäd Sharma
Explains the principles behind vastu architecture and is fully illustrated with house plans.

Serious Straw Bale, A Home Construction Guide for all Climates
By Paul Lacinski and Michel Bergeron
ISBN 1-890132-64-0
Available from Chelsea Green Publishing
A superior resource, covering so much ground that no other straw bale book does, with clarity and wit. An excellent, vital addition to the thinking person’s literature of straw bale. (Mark Piepkorn, The Last Straw)

Shelter
Edited By Lloyd Kahn
Shelter Publications, P.O. Box 279, Bolinas, CA. 94924USA
ISBN 0-936070-11-0
Ph# 415-868-0280, Fax# 415-868-9050
E-mail:[email protected], orders:[email protected], catalog:
[email protected]
www.shelterpub.com
With over 1000 photographs, Shelter is a classic celebrating the imagination, resourcefulness, and exuberance of human habitat. First published in 1973, it is not only a record of the counter-cultural builders of the ’60s, but also of buildings all over the world. There is a history of shelter and the evolution of building types. Tents, yurts, timber buildings, barns, small homes, domes, etc. There is a section on building materials, including heavy timber construction and stud framing, as well as stone, straw bale construction, adobe, plaster and bamboo. There are interviews with builders and tips on recycled materials and wrecking.

The Natural House Book
By David Pearson
A Gaia Original
Published by Simon and Schuster/Fireside
ISBN 0=671-66634-7
ISBN 0-671-66635-5 (pbk)
Provides both inspiration and easy, practical suggestions for using toxin-free materials, improving air and water quality, saving energy, and designing or adapting every room for holistic living-toxin-free, elegantly simple, environmental benign, and nourishing to the body, mind, and spirit.

The Straw Bale House
by Athena Swentzell Steen, Bill Steen, David Bainbridge, with David Eisenberg
ISBN 0-930031-71-7
Describes the many benefits of building with straw bales:
1) Super insulation with R-values as high as R-50
2) good indoors air quality and noise reduction
3) speedy construction process (walls can be erected in a single weekend)
4) construction costs can be as little as $10 per square foot (depending on owner involvement)
5) use of natural and abundant renewable resource can be grown sustainably in one season
6) a better solution than burning agricultural waste straw, which creates tons of air pollutants

Vastushastra and the 21st Century
Pages. 95 ( 1996)
by Bharat Gandhi
Vastushastra deals with architecture at the material and psychological levels. Examines how much the concept is valuable in our times and delves thereby deeply into the reasoning behind the ancient genre of architecture.

The Last Straw, The International Journal of Straw Bale and Natural Living
Last Straw Production Team, HC 66 Box 119, Hillsboro NM88042 USA
PH: 505-895-5400, FAX: 505-895-3326
e-mail:[email protected]
http://thelaststraw.org
This journal is an information-sharing forum created for and by many individuals involved with and interested in straw-bale construction.