Recycle home idea

An idea to recycle crops into homes could change the design of real estate

`HOUSE OF STRAW
The inventive Yankee has discovered, not how to make bricks without straw, but how to make timber from straw. At the forthcoming American Exhibition in London there will be, it is stated, a house of straw, now being made in Philadelphia.
This house is an American suburban villa, very handsome and thoroughly artistic in design, two and a-half stories high, and covering a space of 42ft. by 50ft. It is built entirely of materials manufactured from straw,- foundations timber, flooring, sheathing, roofing – everything in fact, including the chimneys, the material being fireproof, as well as waterproof.
The inside finish will be in imitation rosewood, mahogany, walnut, maple, ash, ebony, and other fine woods, the straw lumber taking perfectly the surface and colour of any desired wood. The straw villa will be devoted to the illustration of Philadelphia’s commercial, financial and industrial interests by means of large photographs of the leading exchanges, banks, insurance buildings, factories, mills, schools, etc. A number of other leading American cities will also make novel exhibits of their municipal resources.’
Article above, from an article which was first published in a British newspaper in the 1860′s.