Strawsheds
Sustainable Building Documentary
by Lavanda Films
Strawsheds is a UK-based sustainable building documentary currently in production, filmed by London based filmmaker Connor Newson. The project explores natural building techniques using straw, lime, and clay, documenting a community-led construction that reimagines eco-friendly design and sustainable architecture.
Strawsheds is an ongoing short documentary film project exploring sustainable construction, community collaboration, and the use of natural materials in contemporary architecture. Currently in production, the film follows an innovative live build led by Material Cultures, WeCanMake, and the RIOT Lab (EPFL) — organisations pioneering low-carbon, community-based approaches to housing and retrofit design.
Filmed on location at the Springfield Community Allotment in Bristol, Strawsheds documents the creation of two 3x4m insulated sheds built for the community group We Are More. These small-scale structures use straw, lime, and clay to demonstrate how biobased materials can offer sustainable, affordable, and locally sourced alternatives within the UK construction sector.
The documentary captures the process of collective making, highlighting the social, environmental, and creative value of natural building techniques. Through a cinematic and observational style, the film reflects on how building together can reconnect people with land, materials, and each other.
Innovative Media Approach
As part of Strawsheds, Lavanda Films has developed an innovative media production workflow designed to meet both cinematic and digital storytelling needs. By filming with multiple cameras simultaneously, we capture 4K cinema-quality footage in both horizontal and vertical formats, ensuring a seamless balance between long-form documentary production and rapid, social-first content creation.
This dual-format approach allows stakeholders to access high-quality, cinematic visuals for the forthcoming documentary, while also producing professionally edited vertical content for platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. The result is an agile and efficient media solution — one that strengthens the social media presence of participating organisations and enables timely, engaging storytelling throughout the project’s development.
Project Update
Filming for Strawsheds is ongoing, as the project continues to evolve on site at the Springfield Community Allotment in Bristol. The straw bale external wall insulation workshops and lime rendering workshops have now been completed, marking key milestones in the live build process. These sessions brought together local residents, architects, and material specialists to explore hands-on techniques in sustainable construction and natural building.
Lavanda Films continues to document this collaborative journey, capturing the craft, conversation, and community that shape each stage of the build. As filming progresses, the project will move into a period of reflection and narrative development — working closely with all stakeholders to shape a documentary story that represents the shared values, voices, and learnings of everyone involved.
The next phase will focus on refining the film’s direction, ensuring the narrative honours both the technical innovation and the human connections at the heart of Strawsheds.
As a London-based videographer working nationally across the UK, I specialise in documentary storytelling, architectural filmmaking, and creative projects that explore sustainability and place. Strawsheds continues to evolve as the build progresses — with final production and post-production scheduled over the next year. In the meantime, check out some other architectural and natural materials projects within the portfolio - including the story behind where these locally-sourced resilient straw bales come from and how it is connected to the struggle for land justice across agriculture and food systems.
This project is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation through the RIOT Lab’s research initiative Material Strategies: Biobased Insulation and Reused Timber Towards a Decarbonized Construction Sector.