Design Competition Tackles Urban Animals Habitats

Feb. 13, 2012 - PRLog -- ‘InMidtown Habitats’, which calls for innovative design ideas for bee hives, bat boxes, bird boxes and planters has been led by InMidtown, the Business Improvement District for Holborn, Bloomsbury and St Giles in conjunction with The Architecture Foundation, to address the challenges of providing wildlife habitats in a metropolitan context.

The design teams were briefed to create prototypes that could be reproduced across the whole district; fit into a business landscape and meet the criteria of expert panel including  a bee-keeper, an ornithologist, a cost consultant and a bat-expert.

The final three designs will be exhibited at a public display in the courtyard at Central Saint Giles – the landmark multicoloured Renzo Piano building – from March to encourage feedback from local workers, residents and visitors.  This will be taken into account by the expert judging panel, which includes, Nigel Coates (Nigel Coates Studio); Jill Cook (British Museum); Ian Douglas (Daily Telegraph); Paul Johnson (Arup); Bridget Nicholls (Pestival / London Zoo); Mark de Rivaz (Bedford Estates, inmidtown) and Etain Fitzpatrick (Renzo Piano Building Workshop). The winning design will be produced and installed in green spaces and on the rooftops and terraces of businesses throughout London’s Midtown area.  
The three finalists are:
Habi-Sabi
Four designers from 51% , using recycled ‘Barsmark’ board, have named their easy assembly flat pack designs ‘Habi-Sabi’ after the Japanese concept of ‘Wabi Sabi’ – that a simple aesthetic grows stronger as the inessentials are stripped away. The idea is to create animal habitats that are fast, adaptable and metropolitan – echoing the very essence of the city.  The design studio 51% specialises in projects on difficult sites, and has a background in designing urban bird nests and buildings that work in harmony with nature.  

b House, the Batwing and Metropollen planter
Landscape architect Jon Akers Coyle paired up with Growth Industry Ltd to propose their three aptly named designs: ‘b House’, ‘the Batwing’ and ‘Metropollen planter.’  The three origami themed steel structures combine a love of contemporary design and the ecological enhancement of the urban environment. Their designs work to help biodiversity re-colonise the capital by creating suitable living spaces in which both humans and bees, birds and bats dwell.

Bee Lifts
Archmongers and Buchanan Partnership submitted a proposal called ‘Bee Lifts’, which incorporates folding arms that will hoist the hive up in the air. The pair hope that the hives will herald a new way of looking at the city, a phenomenon that they call ‘bee tourism’. Their design intends to meld with the design of both the city and nature by assimilating into urban scenery like a lamppost or sign post. Yet natural cycles of bee hibernation and plant seasons will bring these structures to life at certain times of the year.

The competition is the next stage in the BID’s ‘InMidtown Buzz’ campaign, an urban bee-keeping scheme and sits within a wider sustainability programme that aims to see Holborn, Bloomsbury and St Giles become London’s greenest areas.  

Tass Mavrogordato, CEO InMidtown says:
“We recognise the far reaching benefits of working within a district that nurtures biodiversity.  Not only does it create a greener, more pleasant working environment, but a study on the impact of our free urban bee keeping scheme demonstrated that employees who participated in maintaining the hives experienced a morale boost and engaged more in team building.  We are very much looking forward to hearing what the local population thinks about these very exciting new designs, particularly as the winning prototype will have such a postive effect on the district.”  

Sarah Ichioka, Director, The Architecture Foundation says:
“This competition offers participants the chance to produce innovative designs that set a new standard for welcoming nature into the city.  Traditional artificial habitats quite often don’t fit the bill for the city’s winged residents so the InMidtown Habitats competition marks an important milestone in sustainable habitat design.”  

For more information on the competition please visit: www.inmidtown.org or http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/2011/d...

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Notes to Editors
Information about InMidtown:
Established in 2005, InMidtown is a Business Improvement District which represents the interests of businesses in the areas of Holborn, Bloomsbury and St Giles, in order to deliver a quality working environment and a place that is desirable amongst businesses.
On 1st November 2009, InMidtown launched a five year business plan [2010-15] seeking to renew the mandate in Holborn and extend the BID to Bloomsbury and St Giles in February 2010. The mandate was successful and the major regeneration of the area has commenced, with InMidtown now the second largest BID in the UK.
A business improvement district (BID) is a public-private partnership in which businesses in a defined area pay an additional tax or fee in order to fund improvements within the district's boundaries.
The area of Holborn, St Giles and Bloomsbury is located between the West End and the City of London as the geographic centre of London and a major business, commercial and employment centre which welcomes over 200,000 employees each day.
As part of their programme of business sustainability via cost and carbon savings, InMidtown has introduced several key initiatives. InMidtown offers member businesses free recycling schemes, joint procurement on services through their bulk buying club, as well as sustainable travel initiatives in order to reach a 10% carbon reduction.
A world-first for a commercial city district, InMidtown have launched a pioneering initiative that sees the area aim to become the first ever to have zero waste sent to landfill through a system of ‘waste monogamy’. This will see just one provider managing each waste stream for all the businesses who sign up to the scheme.
For more information: http://inmidtown.org
About The Architecture Foundation
Established in 1991 as the UK’s first independent architecture centre, the Architecture Foundation is a non-profit agency for contemporary architecture, urbanism and culture. The foundation carries out a number of programs designed to facilitate international and interdisciplinary exchange, stimulate critical engagement amongst professionals, policy makers and a broad public, and shape the quality of the built environment. www.architecturefoundation.org.uk