Page 42 - BusinessWest December 8, 2025

BUILDING TRADES >>
Sustainable by Design
Rare Forms
Aims to Create
Healthier
Homes
President
Greg Bossie
BY JOSEPH BEDNAR
[email protected]
around building with straw starts in
Greg Bossie jokes that negative ideas
childhood.
“We all grew up with the Three Little
Pigs,” he said. “So people have a lot of
misconceptions about the viability of straw as a build-
ing component.”
But no one’s huffing, puffing, and blowing houses
down that are constructed or renovated by Rare
Forms, a unique, mission-driven construction company
that Bossie launched in 2020.
At the heart of the business model are what’s
known as seed straw panels, which are assembled to
form the exterior of a house or business.
“I really felt that I wanted to push
further into a values- and mission-
based structure, particularly around
the use of bio-based building materials
and internal structure.”
“We build a wood frame, so they are structural. We
build it in a steel jig table, and then the straw gets com-
pressed with a pneumatic press,” he explained. “So
there’s no binder, there’s no lime or cement or anything
like that in it. It’s just compressed straw, which per-
forms really well in terms of the comfort and insulation
of a structure.”
And straw is not hay, he added, knocking down
another one of those misconceptions. “Straw is just the
woody stalk of the grain plant, which could be wheat,
rye, oat, rice, any grain that has a woody stalk. We use
rye from Plainville Farm in Hadley.”
He explained that the hard, compressed straw,
wrapped in a sealed panel, has the same base molecu-
lar structure as wood, and is not prone to decomposi-
tion, partly because of the way it’s airtight, yet ‘vapor-
open,’ allowing any water entering the structure to exit
quickly, preventing moisture damage.
The straw panels are also fire-resistant, whereas
42 << BUILDING TRADES >>
DECEMBER 8, 2025
Business W est