The main focus of this thesis is to address the environmental impact of the materials and systems currently being used in the Centre Court Apartments.  From a structural engineering standpoint, materials that are renewable, have low embodied energy, and/or are made with recycled content are the most preferred sustainable building elements.  Due to the 67.5’ height of the Centre Court Apartments, use of load bearing natural structural elements such as straw bale are prohibited by code and the bearing ability of the bales, therefore a non-load bearing straw bale wall assembly will be used.  Traditionally this post and beam system is done with timber framing.  Chapter 5 of the IBC 2006 height restrictions bans the use of timber frame, so a redesign of the CMU and hollow core slabs system will be done with a concrete frame lateral resisting system with two way flat plate slabs.  A high volume of fly ash or class C pozzolans, which is a waste product from coal burning power plants, will be incorporated into the concrete design mix, replacing up to 50% of the required Portland cement.  Not only does this create a safe, alternative use of contaminates from the power industry, but Portland cement is the most toxic and energy intensive ingredient in concrete due to the need of being heated to 2700 °F.

The straw bale walls will be built on end with a width of 12”. In this orientation, the bales have better thermal qualities and their structural value is not compromised because the entire load of the building is being carried by the concrete system. Because concrete
columns will be used in place of timbers this creates relative stiffness issues with caring a uniform stucco covering to protect the bales from moisture damage. Therefore the slab will extend past the frame and bear the panels completely out of the plane of the columns.

Straw bale construction on a story level of 67.5’ is not a very convenient task due to the unique nature of constructing a straw bale wall. The walls will be pre-cast either on site or offsite locally, and shipped in using methods similar to those of pre-casting straw bale companies around the globe. It also goes without saying that a wall assembly such as this is not a common practice by most local contractors or estimators, therefore, a simple cost breakdown and comparison of only the structural and enclosure system will be conducted against the original. A Microsoft Project schedule will be drafted to outline the feasibility of constructing such a system.