Award winning architectural practice founded by Catherine du Toit and Peter Thomas

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Urban Birds: Nestworks 1 2 3

51% stu­dios has designed three Nest­works for the urban birds of Bank­side fea­tur­ing a series of sophis­ti­cated ready­mades: blocks, boughs and bushes as part of the Lon­don Fes­ti­val of Archi­tec­ture.

The design is respon­sive, site spe­cific and provoca­tive: informed by ornitho­log­i­cal derives with Peter Holden, locally cel­e­brated for ini­ti­at­ing the annual pere­grine fal­con pub­lic views at Tate Modern. The project was com­mis­sioned by the Archi­tec­ture Foun­da­tion, and takes its inspi­ra­tion from With­er­ford Wat­son Mann’s Bank­side Urban For­est Strategy.

Nest­works 1 2 3 are a direct response to the festival’s theme of exchange: of knowl­edge, habi­tat, mate­ri­als. We dis­cov­ered that the stan­dard hol­low block used to build some of London’s most cel­e­brated archi­tec­ture is made from con­crete with 55% recy­cled wood­pulp, a mate­r­ial that when used in nest­boxes is proven to fledge more young than any other. Syn­er­gis­ti­cally the inte­rior block dimen­sions are text book sizes for house spar­rows, rad­i­cally in decline in the area. Other species designed for are blue tits, great tits, star­lings, wrens, robins and blackbirds.

Nest­works 1 2 3 is a legacy project deliv­ered with sup­port from Peter Holden, the Archi­tec­ture Foun­da­tion, River­ford Organic and Lignacite.

Maps show­ing loca­tions of the Nest­works, some of which are hid­den, will avail­able in the Orchard at Union Street from June 19th, or to download.

A related bird­walk and a new talk by Peter and Andy Holden will take place on Sat­ur­day 3rd and Sun­day  4th July.  Pere­grine view­ings at the Tate are daily from 12 noon to 7pm, 17 July to 12 Sep­tem­ber 2010.

Flexible Masterplan

It may be still snow­ing in Creede, but here at 51% stu­dios we’re work­ing hard at work on the devel­op­ment of the sus­tain­able mas­ter­plan for the Upper Rio Grande Event and Recre­ation Com­plex [for­merly known as, and still encom­pass­ing, the Min­eral County Fair­grounds] which has been made pos­si­ble by the El Pomar Grant Award.

Phase 1, which included reme­di­a­tion, relo­ca­tion of wil­lows and the out­door arena, is com­plete and has affored the com­mu­nity of Creede a safe, beau­ti­ful and wind­free place to rope and ride.

For upcom­ing events and news, do also take a look at the MCFA’s newly launched web­site: www.upperriogrande.org

 

 

The Floating Bridge

Today, March 22nd is World Water Day and we are remem­ber­ing a project we did for the inau­gural Lon­don Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale in Clerken­well in 2004, work­ing with a gang of nine and ten year olds to con­struct a float­ing bridge made from 700 Evian bot­tles, the sec­ond in a series of bridges made from recy­cled materials …

Lot of Bot­tle: Our Bien­nale site was the Farmiloes Court­yard in  Clerken­well, where water has been a cen­trally impor­tant part of his­tory, from its springs, wells and spas and later also brew­eries and dis­til­leries. Clerken­well was the site of London’s first reser­voir.  In the 21st cen­tury, though, we have lit­tle direct knowl­edge of where our water comes from and often no longer even drink it from the tap.  Water now costs more than soda, milk and gas in the US.  The fetishis­ing of water and its pack­ag­ing is prob­a­bly the sin­gle great­est threat to human and ani­mal sur­vival across the globe.

To con­nect think­ing about the envi­ron­ment with design and engi­neer­ing more than 700 1.5l Evian bot­tles were recy­cled from fam­ily life and with cable ties, plumb­ing pipes and climb­ing ropes were the pri­mary mate­ri­als used to cre­ate the bridge, which [fol­low­ing some exper­i­ments in bouyancy] suc­cess­fully sup­ported one tonne — that being the com­bined weight of the young engineers.

Whilst the project is just a teach­ing aide for now, its com­mon­place build­ing blocks make it cheap to build. If a small-scale model can divert hun­dreds of plas­tic bot­tles away from land­fill, there’s no rea­son a big­ger project couldn’t use up even more in the real world, while cre­at­ing eas­ily assem­bled emer­gency bridges, rafts or a makeshift res­cue craft.” Lot of Bot­tle, Spark 3, The Guardian

The float­ing bridge was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Dalling­ton School, 51% stu­dios and Tim Mac­far­lane of Dewhurst Mac­far­lane and Part­ners. Other bridges have been made from card­board and paper.

Also on World Water Day, we are wish­ing all the best of luck to David de Roth­schild and the crew of the Plas­tiki, a boat made of 12,000 plas­tic bot­tles, which has just begun a round-the-world trip to high­light the prob­lems of waste in our oceans, much of it caused by plas­tic bottles.

And we couldn’t end with­out men­tion­ing one of our favourite sites, The Big Pic­ture, which has a put up a stun­ning set of National Geo­graphic pic­tures of water [you can also down­load a free inter­ac­tive copy of National Geographic’s April issue on water]

Urban Birds: Nestworks 1 2 3

51% stu­dios has been invited by the Archi­tec­ture Foun­da­tion to develop strate­gies and designs for bird­boxes around the area des­ig­nated as the Ban­side Urban For­est in With­er­ford Wat­son Mann’s masterplan.

The bird­boxes will be deployed as part of the Lon­don Fes­ti­val of Archi­tec­ture in June 2010.

Fairgrounds, Mineral County

Reme­di­a­tion work on this 46 acre site was com­pleted last year, with the out­door arena being moved to its final posi­tion on the lower bench.

The for­mer sil­ver min­ing town of Creede is located in the Alte Vista Moun­tains, 10 miles from the source of the Rio Grande. The fair­ground site’s strate­gic impor­tance is its loca­tion on the flood­plain of Wil­low Creek - it can be seen for miles from the Sil­ver Thread Scenic High­way. The site makes an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the nat­ural land­scape and could become an iconic sig­na­ture for the town.

The Min­eral County Fair­grounds Asso­ci­a­tion approached 51% stu­dios to develop with them a pro­posal for per­ma­nent all weather fair­ground facil­i­ties which could be imple­mented over time. Each phase will need to func­tion in its own right, allowing for the next with max­i­mum effi­ciency. We devel­oped a flex­i­ble mas­ter dia­gram, using reme­di­a­tion to cre­ate an endur­ing ‘func­tional land­scape’, pre­serv­ing and enhanc­ing exist­ing views to and from the site.

Facil­i­ties will include a multi-purpose all-weather arena, com­mu­nity cen­ter and pub­licly acces­si­ble land­scape where equal impor­tance is given, and clear dis­tinc­tions made, between pedes­tri­ans, the ani­mals and their trucks.

Local sus­tain­able design research has included a sur­vey of read­ily avail­able local mate­ri­als, effi­cient energy cre­ators such as ground source, solar cells etc, indige­nous build­ing tra­di­tions such as straw bale and stucco con­struc­tion, in-floor radi­ant heat, and nat­ural lighting.

The Min­eral County Fair­grounds Asso­ci­a­tion [MCFA] has suc­cess­fully secured city, county, state and fed­eral grants for the site, as well as over­see­ing the Vol­un­tary Cleanup Operation.

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