The aim of the baling event was the production of construction grade straw bales with the straw of the abbey’s farm (Klostergut) at site. This baling event may appear to be a simple transformation of large bales into small ones, but in fact a temporary manufacturing plant was set up for the production of a building material. This requires raw materials (big bales), technical equipment (mobile baling machine of SonnenKlee GmbH), a quality control (BauStroh GmbH), as well as material logistics from feeding to palletizing to intermediate storage and an interaction of the persons involved. This was the first time that this was done on the scale of the St. Wunibald building project. In this respect, regardless of the result, this baling event is a pioneering achievement and a good “story” to tell.
The result was the production of construction grade straw bales suitable for the installation purpose. There was a list of the required bales, a test wall element and a meeting of those involved in the straw bale construction at the monastery estate. Bales of different sizes were produced according to the enclosed list. Selected bales were successfully installed on the test wall element. The baling event ended prematurely, so that approximately 600 bales for the roof are still missing.
Author: Benedikt Kaesberg, Abbey Plankstetten, 11.06.2020
