Straw bales provide good sound insulation at the new Friends Center in San Diego, California. Photo: Ken Barratt
Straw bales for San Diego
Friends look for sustainable initiatives
The Californian city of San Diego is to host the world’s first Quaker Meeting House made of straw bales. More than eighty volunteers have been involved over a period of four years in the process of building the San Diego Friends Center, which will open with a weekend of celebrations on 11-13 March.
San Diego Quakers told the Friend that they were motivated by a desire to produce a sustainable structure that would ‘keep us cool in San Diego summers’. Temperatures there can reach as high as forty-three degrees Celcius.
The building will be used for worship by both Quakers and the Church of the Brethren, a Christian pacifist denomination. It will provide meeting space for peace and community organisations. There will also be programmes for architects and engineers to inspire the use of ‘new, sustainably produced materials and systems’.
San Diego Friends are giving over the centre’s garden to the production of food for local homeless people. They say they hope it will inspire other Friends in both the US and UK to ‘get rid of their rose beds and lawns to cultivate fruit and vegetables’.
Comments
...or in the case of Australia, get rid of our lawns to cultivate water-wise native plants, and fruit and vegetables”. Lovely to see this sustainable approach to building and grounds.”
By Adrian Glamorgan on 11th March 2011 - 2:18
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