Straw Building Passes Quake Test

Geoff Lawton January 30, 2013

1 Less than a minute

After Pakistan was devastated by an earthquake in 2005, Darcey Donovan, an engineer in California, pursued designs for quake-resistant homes using local materials. The result was a straw-bale building. It withstood substantial shaking in tests at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Geoff Lawton January 30, 2013

1 Less than a minute

Geoff Lawton

Geoff Lawton is a world renowned Permaculture consultant, designer and teacher. He first took his Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course in 1983 with Bill Mollison the founder of Permaculture. Geoff has undertaken thousands of jobs teaching, consulting, designing, administering and implementing, in 6 continents and close to 50 countries around the world. Clients have included private individuals, groups, communities, governments, aid organizations, non-government organisations and multinational companies under the not-for-profit organisation. In 1996 Geoff was accredited with the Permaculture Community Services Award by the Permaculture movement for services in Australia and around the world. Geoff's official website is GeoffLawtonOnline.com. Geoff's Facebook profile can be found here.

One Comment

Darren J. Doherty says:

January 31, 2013 at 9:10 pm

G’day,

Interesting Geoff…some Chilean clients of ours suffered a 8+ quake a couple of years back (that went on for minutes) and many of the traditional adobe structures on their large holding were damaged severely or destroyed completely. Their relatively new strawbale however had some surface cracking to the internal mud render…

All the best,

Darren Doherty

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