proyectos

R+7 / ITE PAILLE

Île-de-France

Energy retrofit of a 1930s residential building at 132 rue de la Convention (Paris 15th arrondissement), owned by the public operator Paris Habitat. The intervention, designed by the Trait Vivant–Landfabrik consortium and carried out between 2019 and 2020, applied external thermal insulation (ETICS) using straw bales across seven storeys, an unprecedented height for this technique within dense Parisian urban fabric. From the third to the seventh floor, 35 cm plywood ribs fixed to the existing masonry distribute the loads and house the fitted bales; on the first and second floors, an experimental variant without studs was trialled, with the bales strapped directly to the wall. The build-up, around 47 cm thick, achieves a thermal resistance of R=7 m²K/W — equivalent to 30 cm of mineral wool — at a cost of €243/m², comparable to that of a good-quality conventional external insulation system. The project demonstrates that straw, an agricultural by-product that stores carbon, can compete in high-rise urban retrofitting.