Although the couple are building it as a house to live in, at a cost of about pounds 220,000, they are treating it as a research project. As university lecturers in architecture, they want to demonstrate that living an energy-efficient and green lifestyle can be normal - indeed must be so, if the planet is to be self-sustaining."We want to get away from the idea that you have to be a back-to-nature dreamer to be environmentally sound," says Mr Till. Straw bales are cheap at pounds 1.50 each, easy for self-builders to use, and are good insulators. Perhaps the most ambitious bale project yet is in southern Ireland, where a family of four lives in a round, three-storey house - but its location is a closely guarded secret. The plan for another straw house envisaged by architects Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth is just as impressive, but in a very different way: it is slap bang in the middle of New Labour's heartland - Islington, north London, just off the Caledonian Road, to be exact.Islington Council has approved plans for their three-bedroom house to be built on a derelict patch of former railway land Construction is due to start in May next year.
Buildings made out of straw bales are no longer seen as the wacky creations of pastoral dreamers. They have become serious constructions in their own right, from their early manifestations as utilitarian storesheds to today's growing number of full-blown family houses. Perhaps visible bum cleavage and wolf whistles from the building site really are crumbling away.. The straw house built by the little pig in the fairy tale, which was huffed, puffed and blown down by the wicked fox, has had a bad press. The truth is that this pig's dwelling may have been centuries ahead of its time. The elderly and disabled will find computerised households particularly useful, it is claimed - an effective variation on care in the community.The holistic approach extends too to the process of building so that client, architect and builder co-operate from the start. And women, through empowerment groups such as Amazon Nails, are starting to muscle in on this most male of preserves.
Its assembled architects are pitching their vision at what is affordable, and housing associations and local authorities are queuing up for a slice of the action. It is even possible to call home from a mobile phone and have the oven switch on your dinner. When you get back, an electronic notepad will flash up any phone messages.Leading the way in intelligent housing is the Integer Project. Domestic microprocessors can now control every system in the house. The sensitive - or intelligent - house can co-ordinate burglar alarm, boiler, thermostat, radiator valve, television, video, cooker, and telephone.In an intelligent house, if the inhabitants are going away for, say, two weeks, they will only have to touch a control panel to tell the computer, and energy wastage is cut to a minimum.