Straw bale house construction is shown in this video (3min 59sec) movie trailer for the "Building With Awareness" DVD video. Straw bale walls, thermal mass walls, earth plaster techniques, and passive solar design are all explained in this how-to DVD on building with natural materials.
Straw-bale construction is a building method that uses straw bales as structural elements, insulation, or both. It is commonly used in natural building. It has advantages over some conventional building systems because of its cost and easy availability, and its high insulation value.
Although grasses and straw have been in use in a range of ways in building since pre-history around the world, their incorporation in machine-manufactured modular bales seems to date back to the early 20th century in the midwestern United States, particularly the sand-hills of Nebraska, where grass was plentiful and other building materials (even quality sods) were not.
