Terrepaille building
This building, set on a hill in the surroundings of Parma, is the first straw-clay Italian construction, based on the French Terrepaille principles. It hosts a graphic designer’s home and office as well as a bed and breakfast.
The resistant timber structure of the building is composed of a mixture of solid timber and prefab wooden profiles. The straw-bale insulated roof has a structure made of chestnut tree trunks, while the walls are built using I-profile joists (FinnJoist). The flanges of these elements are made of Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), an engineered wood product that uses multiple layers of thin wood assembled with adhesives, while the web is made out of Oriented Strand Board (OSB) panels.
The web of the I-profiles has been perforated, in order to allow connection within the different wall sections. These have been built with a mixture of clay, water and straw fibers, the proportions of which have been tailored according to the wall orientation.
The bracing system of the building is obtained by fixing the profiles in their main direction, so that the walls are fixed out-of-plane.
Team
Location: Fornovo di Taro (PR), Italy
Time: 2017
Status: Completed
Services: Structural design and engineering, executive design consultancy
