I have often watched, on television shows like Grand Designs, self-builders taking a lot of time packing straw bales to make walls, and then rounding them off with chain saws.
ModCell is a company based in Bath which has applied for patents for a Construction panel where straw bales are treated in modular fashion: you slot in the panels where needed. They already have a granted British patent, and the product is already available -- as ModCell®. Here is the main drawing.
Straw is plentiful and provides excellent insulation (although rather bulky, perhaps), and is sometimes used as a green method in construction. Enabling its use in pre-made panels should make its use cheaper, simpler and quicker.
The ModCell website was very attractive and interesting, and I particularly liked reading about the BaleHaus which was built in 2009 in Bath.
The classification E04B1/35K is for "constructions using straw bales" and there are 34 patent documents in the list available on Espacenet.
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