Shed of the year 2024, Sponsored by 
The Old Girl was built by five women, all members of London Community Neighbourhood Co-operative (LCNC), a straw bale trainee and a group of volunteers in 25 working days
She is a load bearing straw bale shed rendered with cob and roofed with pond liner
She has an olive jar window using the jars of the olives eaten during the build!
She has a wooden ramp to make the her fully accessible
She is low tech showing that ordinary people with few or no building skills can construct a building
The Old Girl is a model building to showcase the beauty, advantages, simplicity and uniqueness of load bearing straw bale buildings
She is set in a small garden, an urban food growing site registered with Capital Growth.
LCNC, plans to self build a straw bale apartment block and community centre in central London and wanted to find out unique building methods. Building and maintaining a load bearing straw bale building is easier for those with little or no building experience as well as being a unique, relatively cheap and ecologically sound building process. LCNC, responding to its immediate need for affordable workspace, were inspired to build our own office/meeting space from scratch and at the same time learn about this innovative and unique building technique.
The video below
shows the first 25 days of building from clearing the ground to the building being being water tight.
