listening
Habitats are part of the commons, which are the cultural and natural resources accessible to a society. The commons include natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. They can be understood as natural resources that communities manage for individual and collective benefit. Our agency as architects allows us to intervene in the creation and conservation of these commons, by identifying and protecting them where they exist and providing opportunities for them to develop where they are lacking.
A tree sparrow feeds its fledgling chick in a garden. Photo by Chandan Chaurasia on Unsplash
Creating architecture for other species requires a renewed way of reading cities. We have learned to see them as landscapes containing habitats and ecosystems which evade, exploit, subvert and complement the realms inhabited by people. Urban wildlife have demonstrated ways in which cities could better accommodate non-humans and we have a responsibility to take their cues. Cliff-nesting birds roosting on buildings and foxes with urban foraging ranges are two of the most visible and successful examples of wildlife adapting to urban habitats, with self-sustaining populations of both in most British cities. Birds adapt to life by singing faster, shorter, and higher pitch songs in the cities compared to forests as they compete with anthropogenic sound while others choose to roost in city-centre trees to avoid predators.
The Starling.(Sturnus vulgaris) by Bernard Spragg on Flickr
There are many more species however, which have not been able to adapt to human changes to their environment – birds killed by striking glass buildings, sea turtles disoriented by city lights and bats trapped in synthetic insulation for example. We must learn from these stories and adapt (obscure the glass, control artificial light, use alternative insulation).
The brown long-eared bat, a once-common cohabitant of human homes. Photo: ‘I am the night. I am the terror…to moths’ by Javier Ábalos via Flickr
In 2010 we worked with the ornithologist Peter Holden MBE who was introduced to us through his son, the artist Andy Holden. Together, Peter and Andy have produced work at the intersection of natural history and fine art, including their 2017 exhibition Natural Selection which combined ornithological artefacts (eggs, nests, bird-collected decorations) with painting, sculpture and film. The outcome of our collaboration with Peter was the project Nestworks 1 2 3, commissioned by the London Festival of Architecture. With Peter’s guidance, we created three ready-made nesting structure prototypes – blocks, boughs and bushes – which were installed on urban sites.
A blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) using a nesting brick delivered as part of Nestworks. Photo, habi-sabi.
Nestworks taught us to look at scruffiness from a non-human perspective. We began to appreciate that those brambles, scrambling russian vines and mature flowering ivies provide valuable habitat for a host of wildlife, and shelter from magpies, who cannot reach sparrow eggs through the tangles. The project developed into a range of flatpack nest boxes called habi-sabi. (The name celebrates urban habitats and the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi – an appreciation of nature as essential.) The habi-sabi range now includes bat boxes, hedgehog boxes and beehives in addition to the bird boxes.
habi-sabi nesting aids mounted on a wall in Little Dorrit Park as part of Nestworks. Photo, habi-sabi
Architecture for other species is about more than making objects for animals to inhabit, it is an approach to architectural practice which takes the ecological implications of design as a priority on every project. Human architecture comes into contact with other species, whether in planned or unplanned ways, and as designers we have a responsibility to anticipate the potential impacts of our work on non-human neighbours with as much care as we would address impacts on human communities. Since we cannot directly consult with wildlife, this work requires an added layer of facilitation. We address this through research and collaboration with specialists and organisations (beekeeper Helen Rogers, the RSPB, the Bat Trust and ZSL for example) who are qualified to understand the factors impacting wildlife and can advocate for non-humans in design and planning processes.
the habi-sabi flatpack hedgehog house is easy to assemble and can be rapidly deployed
Much of our research to date has been framed from the vantage point of our home city, London, a Forest City and National Park City with 8.4 million trees. The foremost failure of cities from an ecological perspective is the erasure and interruption of the natural pathways and connections which existed on the land before it was built-up. Without these connections, surviving urban wildlife populations are isolated from the layered, self-regulating network that holds them in natural environments and are vulnerable to collapse as a result.
Human awareness of this issue is growing, and measures such as creation of wildlife corridors (continuous passages of urban habitat) are now present in planning law. Architecture for other species necessarily includes consideration of infrastructure for other species – there is no benefit in installing a nest box on a site where the prospective inhabitant would be unable to sustain themselves by foraging or protect themselves from predation for example. Lack of understanding of the needs and behaviour of urban wildlife leads to unintended harm (as in the case of the Regents’ Park hedgehogs whose breeding was disrupted by the introduction of fences in their territories) or missed opportunities (as when urban green space is planned without indigenous plants, providing scarce opportunities for native wildlife).
a hog uses a habi-sabi hedgehog gate in London’s Regent’s Park
In the midst of mass extinction, we cannot afford to make such errors, or wait for policy to catch up. Infrastructure for other species (e.g. hedgehog gates). As architects we have a particular responsibility to address the exclusion of animals in the modern built environment. Traditionally, we shared our homes and barns with swifts, bats and owls. But today we have created a homeless migrant animal population. Already struggling with habitat loss and climate change, swifts arrive to find their nest places sealed up – or gone. It is not enough to address the climatic implications of energy-use through high-performance design without also taking the needs of wildlife into consideration – if swifts can no longer roost under our eaves, we must provide alternatives.
habi-sabi’s swift and bat column for Worcester Six Business Park, installed in 2022