When no less an A&D luminary than Kevin McCloud raves about a product on the world stage, it’s probably a good idea to listen.

A few years ago McCloud’s company Hab (Happiness Architecture Beauty) delivered a 42-home project called The Triangle in Swindon, Wiltshire in the UK, using hempcrete as the building material.

“I look at the range of materials out there and I cannot find one to match hemp,” he told filmmakers Blaire Johnson and Linda Booker at the time.

“I can’t find one that has such a low embodied energy, that locks carbon in, has such a low environmental impact, that can be grown locally and harvested with minimum input in just a few months. It’s an incredibly expedient building method.”

Here in Australia a growing number of people have also heard the message loud and clear.

One of them is journalist Sally Maguire, who is one of the newest residents of a rather special community near Butterwick, north of Newcastle in New South Wales. Known as Shepherds Ground Farm and Village, this off-the-grid community was the brainchild of Lucie Bruvel, who established it after years spent living in a French village.

This is the ethos of the place as detailed on its website: “To create a place for the renewal of rural village life with small viable farming ventures and businesses, sustainable clustered housing and simplified living that stimulates cultural expression, listening to the land and connectedness to country.”

In order to live there, people buy shares in the company and build houses following the models already established.

After a couple of years of research and investigation, in 2017 Maguire, her husband and two sons made the decision to move from Sydney, and invest in making a life at Shepherds Ground Farm and Village. And last year they built their own house, joining a handful already completed.

“There are currently six new builds and there’ll be 27 when it’s finished. All but about five shares have been sold,” says Maguire, adding that originally the DA specified a staged project.

This stipulation was removed in 2019, “so now there’s more freedom for people to build and not have to wait for their stage,” she says.

The A team

The first four houses on site were all made from hemp, as construction using sustainable building materials and principles is encouraged. “There was a lot of information available and talk about building with hemp. Actually that was one of the big drivers for us – we wanted a ‘tree change’, but a large part of that dream was to build a hemp house,” says Maguire.

After attending a number of workshops and conducting more research, they decided to build with hempcrete, which is an ancient mixture of hemp, lime and water that has been used for centuries. Another deciding factor was the hemp’s source.

“The hemp was grown by local farmers and we picked it up from the mill in Dungog about 30 minutes away. We also realised the importance of selecting a lime binder that would complement the natural thermal and acoustic properties of the hemp,” says Maguire, adding the choice of binder comes down to “horses for courses”, but there were a couple of factors that tipped them towards a mix with a high volume of air lime.

Another decider was meeting Hudson Doyle, who runs Hemp Lime Constructions with his business partner Duane Royal. Doyle has long experience as a construction project manager and Royal is a craftsman, but Hemp Lime is a bold enterprise for the pair, supplying and installing Tradical hempcrete.

It’s still a fairly new initiative, says Maguire, but Doyle’s enthusiasm and knowledge won her over. “He was so amazing, but yet also willing to learn,” she recalls. “He just put a lot of time and effort in and he was coming from such a solid place.”

Doyle and Royal visited Shepherds Ground to build a display wall, and after some in depth conversations Maguire signed them up.

Together they built a hempcrete house, working from plans drawn up by Shepherds Ground’s original architect, Gregory Burgess (GBA Architects, Melbourne) and adapted by local architect, Natalie van der Merwe.

“She had worked on the design of another member’s house and I got a great reference. She’s going to build a hemp house for her family, so she knew a lot about the material and was a really good fit.”

Clearly, for Maguire, intent and approach are prime motivators when it comes to choosing collaborators and with the crew in place, the build began in September 2019.

The process

After consulting with Australia’s most experienced hemp builder, Balanced Earth in Mullumbimby, the team began the framing process, but didn’t erect it all in one go, so that they could do continuous shuttering. This meant the hempcrete pour would be faster. Even with rain and other distractions, the pour was completed remarkably quickly.

“We nailed it in two weeks,” says Maguire, adding that it was all hands on deck, in a good old-fashioned barn-raising kind of way.

“I put the call out for people who were interested and I provided catering. Heaps of people rocked up and helped, which made it an absolutely amazing experience.”

The main issue in working with the lime is that it is caustic if it gets on the skin or in the eyes.

“We were very diligent about safety,” recalls Maguire, “but it’s an easy product to work with. It’s all about getting your workflow right. We had proper wash stations, gloves and long sleeves, and it was all done really well, so that it was the safest it could be.”

Home sweet home

Maguire and her family moved into the single-storey, four-bedroom house with compost toilets during the COVID-19 crisis and couldn’t be happier. The hemp walls provide insulation, all the windows are double-glazed, and a low emission, wood-fired stove was recently installed. Maguire says the hempcrete is performing brilliantly when it comes to regulating the heat, while the aesthetics are another attraction.

The hemp walls inside are exposed and “you can see the layers, which give it this beautiful texture. There’s no uniformity, but it’s almost like the waves found in sand dunes from a distance,” she says.

“We love it. It’s just really comfortable inside. I’m so glad that we chose to build a hempcrete house; I do think it’s a wonderful building material.”

Learn more on Instagram @sallyfromthehuntervalley @shepherdsgroundnsw @hemp.lime.

Photography: Courtesy of Sally Maguire.

This article is from Architectural Review 164. If you would like to read the latest full magazine, click here to receive a complimentary copy of our first digital issue.