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JANA LANE GUEST HOUSE / STUDIO Originally built as a guesthouse for traveling friends and family, this building is now the home of the Studio of Sustainable Design. The architect and his friends built the 500 sq ft, one-story structure with loft, on his home property at the foot of the Northern Idaho mountains.
SMALL HOUSES
LARGER HOUSES
RENOVATIONS & ADDITIONS
MULTI FAMILY
NON RESIDENTIAL
ALLEY FRIENDS ARCHITECTS
The structure was built with load-bearing, two-string straw-bale walls. Participants in a
three-day workshop learned to stack, compress, and double-coat the walls with cement stucco. They learned that air-bag compression produces strong, well-insulated walls.
Ecological features include recycled foam ICF
grade beams on a rubble trench foundation, recycled
wood ICF
shower walls, sun-facing
summer ventilation, and radiant floor heating. More ecological elements include a waterless composting toilet, bluegrass straw-board wall finishes,
a reused entry door, glass blocks, and wood
timbers.
The shape is a simple rectangle with curved end walls. An eastern porch draws in sun during the winter and shade during the summer. Salvaged hand-peeled logs and beams frame the entry.
Southern windows and a
reversed roof dormer fill the interior space with light and passive solar warmth, while venting summer heat. The ceiling is covered with natural reed fence
panels.
The
radiant-heat concrete floor is finished with hand-made clay tiles and detailed with inlaid pebbles from the shore of Lake Pend
Oreille. Colored glass artwork decorates deep slate windowsills set in white stucco
walls.
The straw-bale structure is built to withstand the cold, wet Idaho
winters.
Copyright © 2002-2011 Bruce Eugene Millard, Studio of Sustainable Design. Website by www.gentleharvest.org.