
The winning design by AA students Jorgen Tandberg and Yo Murata for the Bat House Project
The Bat House Project is an attempt to raise awareness on biodiversity in London through encouraging public engagement in ecology issues and to improve the living condition of London’s 10 bat species. A competition was launched to design a home for bats in WWT London Wetlands Centre in Barnes.
Another recent bat house that comes to mind is the plywood built Bat Tower in Griffis Sculpture Park south of Buffalo, NY. The Bat Tower is a project by Joyce Hwang, with the help of her architecture students at the University at Buffalo. The construction consists of four hundred pieces of plywood creating narrow spaces, which apparently are ideal as bedrooms for bats.
Bat Tower in Griffis Sculpture Park
Previously I have been engaged in the discussion on the role and consequences of architecture’s impact on ecology and the coexistence of mankind, flora and fauna through a project with NoMadSpaceLab on the creation of a Synergy Reef in order to protect the fragile eco system of coral reefs and coastal mangroves.
Seabed view of Synergy Reef by NoMadSpaceLab
I find it interesting if designer housing for our far out relatives is picking up and the possibilities it generates for creative solutions. As Ben Campkin states:
“At the present moment – in which radical reconceptions of relationships between architecture and nature are called for – attention to animals, their habitats and their occupation of man-made environments, has the power to reveal architecture’s place within wider social and geographical processes… Considerations of the exchange between animals and architecture take us beyond the isolated architectural object, and of context as site, helping us to understand the architectural production of nature and to rethink architecture’s and architects’ zones of influence, connecting buildings to their environs in dynamic ways.”
In collaboration with Unlocked, we explore the future of hybrid space and how the cultural sector and events industry can reap the benefits of this new urban frontier in the post-COVID city.
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