7 Questions for Mattie Mead, Hemp Architect

WCL News — A new hemp building project is designing and building the first public use hemp building in the United States. This building will function as a community center and yoga studio and will be built at Idaho BaseCamp located in the Idaho back country.

Matthew Mead, hemp architect, stated, “We are intending to set an example with this building; to show the potential of hempcrete in the United States as a sustainable method. If you can build in the Idaho back country with this material, you can build with it nearly anywhere.”

The Leaf Online contacted Mead with seven questions for the hemp architect.

How many people will be able to fit inside?

The building will be mostly utilized for yoga classes and will accomodate a class of 20 easily. The space will also be utilized for speaker series and a community space, so it will be able to hold more than 20 for those kind of events.

Do you have a tenant for the yoga studio already?

The building is part of Idaho BaseCamp’s master plan, so they are the owners of the building and land. They intend to rent the space out for a variety of uses, so there will be no one particular tenant. By utilizing this as a community space that can be rented out, we intend to expose many others to the sensation of a hemp building for years to come.

What’s your HVAC solution? Are you anticipating lower electrical bills to keep the building climate controlled?

We considered a variety of heating solutions for the space. Where this building is located there is extreme cold, many months of the year. We ran into the issue of many different systems potentially failing or pipes freezing. This ruled out a lot of the conventional strategies, in addition to factors such as cost. We have decided to utilize a rocket mass stove, a pretty traditional yet effective strategy. We are also using evacuated solar tubes for hot water which will play into a radiant heating floor system. In conjunction, these two systems will be designed and paired so as to not have any irreconcilable breakdown. Hemp construction, when done properly, will lead to reduced heating costs because of its incredible insulating ability. We are also utilizing passive solar heating strategies with curtain walls, further warming the space. You can check out Architecture news before planning anything big.

Your Kickstarter is asking for $25k. That seems like a very small amount to build a large building, even though the amount is itemized. Is someone donating labor?

Our Kickstarter campaign is designed to subsidize the cost of the hemp material for this project. Because hemp building is not extremely cost effective since the material must be imported. We wanted to ensure that this building will be constructed with hemp to further legitimize the hemp industry in the United States and show that it is a viable and practical strategy. Idaho BaseCamp is managing the fundraising for all other aspects of the building.

Do you have any hard numbers on the quantity of CO2 sequestered by one of your buildings?

Not yet.

Your Kickstarter page mentions that this is the beginning of a much bigger project to develop a proprietary binding matrix. What can you tell me about that?

We believe that hemp building can transcend what is deemed as conventional best practice. We have been researching different formulas to create a material that performs even better than best practice. As with every industry, innovation can pave the way to further breakthroughs. We are confident that with our mentorship and preliminary research, we will be able to obtain these desirable properties.

With the DEA seizing hemp seeds bound for Kentucky’s legal research hemp cultivation project, what makes you certain that your project will go forward, despite having your paperwork in order?

What happened in Kentucky was a result of their importation of viable hemp seeds. Industrial hemp containing no viable hemp seeds is legal to import, so we don’t anticipate having any trouble bringing in this hemp. If it did have viable hemp seeds, it’d be likely that there would be some sort of hold up. It is commendable however that Kentucky has challenged the DEA in their detainment of these seeds, and this will help to continually pave the way for hemp legalization in the United States.

— West Coast Leaf News Service