Filling and Insulation possibilities

Drawings from the nature lab

The most valuable things that I gained from the trip to the nature lab was looking how the bonding agent interacted with the surface of the material. Also just looking at what the surface of the materials looked like.

Current uses of rice straw and rice hull

http://www.biomassandbioenergy.nl/filesricestraw/KeijsersSustainableBuilding.pdf

Not really something for our class, but this was one was people dealt with excess rice straw

Earthen plaster consruction

Using straw for insulation and construction

Material Studies

Instead of looking at chemical or other ways of transforming the materials I was looking at how I could exploit the physical properties of each materials.

-I saw rice straw is naturally tied-up and knotted. Instead on compressing it I mixed it with glue and was seeing if it would hardened up into a brick form that would still be filled with empty space. I created rectangular spaces that straw would have to take shape in.

I also was looking how well the materials could keep a form. I dipped a ballon in glue, rubbed rice hull to cover the surface, and then repeated the process several times to build up a skin.

I also tried vacuum forming one of the balls to seal all of the material in

-I also tried the turning the sugar cane back into solid form similar to which it once was.

Costa Rica economy

Peabody Museum visit

Seeing artifacts at the museum was a great way to start thinking about materials studies. The biggest thing I got out of the visit is that any material can be utilized to fit a need. Such as what we saw with the banana  fibers ,which I assume would be a difficult material to work with, was being used in a variety of ways. If you approach a material by focusing on one "unit" at a time it is possible to see how one can create a larger form.