Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork is a Unique Strawbale Construction School

The building of the WSRF, as unique as it was, is also very typical of efforts in Waldorf communities.

I learned from our friends Priscilla and Jeff Dickinson that the school was moving to Carbondale and building their first building with strawbale. Jeff was the architect and when he said, “You have to be involved. You’re the only one who knows strawbale,” I agreed to work as the straw boss and volunteer coordinator. I never thought it would be seven days a week with a couple of twenty-two hour days by the end of summer! It was an intense way to enter a new community and to engage in something so much bigger than I, but I fell in love with Waldorf education while talking with parents and plastering walls. The incredible commitment of this community to creating a beautiful, color-filled, textured, non-toxic, day-lit space for their children touched me. As David Orr says, it is architecture as pedagogy, what learning spaces could be. It’s a concept I’m promoting in my work in natural building.

The plan for the first building process was brilliant and Matt Flink, the project manager, kept to the plan. The critical path (slab, framing, plumbing, electrical) was subbed out so that the volunteers would not hold up the timeline. The volunteer days were pre-planned and there was tremendous support from those who couldn’t do construction to make lunches and offer child care. Julie Mulcahy and Kate Friesen adopted Paul and many others.

The wall-raising for the first building was on one weekend, July ___, 1998. We had volunteers from the Waldorf community that extended far beyond the valley plus volunteers from the local community and the strawbale community. We pre-trained wall captains for every section, teaching them how to pin and shape the bales and install the window bucks. There was a written, detailed plan stapled up for every section. When the weekend came, a hundred people helped to raise the walls on a 5,700 square foot building...