habi-sabi finalist for inmidtown competition
Prototypes for 51% studios habi-sabi collection for inmidtown, including a swift & bat box, beehive and planter with tiny pool, log store and gravel tray on display at 5 Central St Giles. 
Other finalist designs include the bee lift, the batwing, b house and metropollen planter. Votes can be cast by text or online. The winning design will be produced and installed on the rooftops and terraces of businesses around Holborn and St Giles in late spring.
Nestworks exhibited at Arup Phase 2
As part of Fritz Haeg’s Animal Estate 8.0, 51% Studios Architecture was invited to exhibit the Nestwork blocks, bush and boughs at Arup Phase 2, from October 16th through January 20th, 2012.
Other projects on display are:
Nestworks honoured in Animal Architecture Awards
Animal Architecture has announced the winning entries for the 2011 Animal Architecture Awards. They say: “We had an amazing group of projects from all corners of the Globe and an exciting mix of fantastical, plausible and built projects that reinterpret the way we Human animals might interact with our companion species. Congratulations to all of the entrants! Job well done!”
See all the entries here
Birds in the blocks
Not concerned that they were designed for House Sparrows, a Blue Tit family has been incubating their brood in one Union Street Urban Orchard ‘duplexes’ over the last few weeks.
Blue Tit leaving Nestworks Block at the Union Street Urban Orchard. Photo: Peter Thomas
The adapted readymades, fashioned from a standard Lignacite block, were the first prototypes installed for the 2010 London Festival of Architecture, so its fitting that they were also the first to be occupied.
Commissioned by the Architecture Foundation as a permanent legacy for the festival, Nestworks feature in the ‘Union Street Urban Orchard Book : A Case Study of Creative Interim Use’ which will be available from The Architecture Foundation website and at the book launch tonight.
Urban Birds
Around Valentine’s Day courting birds across the UK will begin inspecting potential nesting sites. Informed and inspired by ornithological derives with Peter Holden MBE, 51% studios architecture has planted scores of ‘assisted readymades’ across the Bankside Urban Forest to increase the variety of nesting options open to its urban birds, many of whom are on the endangered list.
We discovered that the standard hollow block used to build some of London’s most celebrated architecture is made from concrete bulked with recycled woodshavings, a material that when used in nestboxes is proven to fledge more young than any other.
Synergistically the interior block dimensions are text book size for house sparrows, radically in decline in the area. Other species designed for are blue tits, great tits, starlings, wrens, robins and blackbirds.
A website, www.urbanbirds.net, launches on Valentine’s Day to allow nesting activity to be tracked by families and bird lovers across the area. Nestworks is a public project and a people’s project, commissioned by the Architecture Foundation as a permanent legacy for the London Festival of Architecture.
Out & About
