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  4^{th July}.  Peregrine viewings at the Tate are daily from 12 noon to 7pm, 17 July to 12 September 2010.

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

City Year unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service, giving them skills and opportunities to change the world. Here at 51% studios we are proud to be working closely with City Year to plan and implement their first office and training spaces in London’s Shoreditch.

In a recent article in the Guardian, Sophie Livingstone writes: “Our experience at City Year over the last 20 years is that young people are transformed through both the full time nature of the programme – they spend ten months with us – and because they can, to paraphrase the Gandhi quote used by David Cameron today, ‘lose themselves in service’. They serve every day from 8am–6pm as tutors, mentors and role models in schools, having an impact on childrens’ attendance, behaviour and performance in maths and English, as well as providing them with role models to whom they can aspire.

That double benefit, to both the young people and the communities they work in, has been seized on by Barack Obama, whose endorsement of City Year is our biggest recruiting tool amongst young people in London, and it’s a concept that has huge potential for tackling pressing problems in the UK.”

Others on the shortlist are Donald Insall Associates, Richard Griffiths Architects, Witherford Watson Mann and Wright & Wright.

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]

Recycle and reduce: The facility embraces green building strategies, paying special attention to promoting the use of natural light. A family of seven suites is crafted from recycled, lightweight and translucent materials with a monolithic resin floor to reflect and amplify the natural light.  No dry wall and little glass is used, and suites made from formaldehyde-free, post-industrial recycled wood fibreboard are soundproofed with recycled jeans.

Suite interiors are individually decorated and furnished, with one wall left predominantly raw and finished in a natural soy based clear sealant. Split battens enable the constant technical upgrade and maintenance whilst keeping cables discreet. Computer aided construction by Showman Fabricators allowed a rapid fit out on site, and produced beautifully clean interiors.

The combination of translucent polycarbonate walls, top lit with dimmable low energy diodes and a mocha coloured resin floor give the overall effect of a calm radiance. Five offline suites, a graphics suite and a new HD finishing suite are the creative heart of the space. All rooms have been the latest versions of Avid and Final Cut and are SD/HD compatible.

Shed Modernism: Biscuitgate happened here …

When Justine Roberts approached us to design a meeting room for Mumsnet Towers, the parameters were simple: it had to provide privacy and yet allow natural light through it and it had to be good value for money. Oh, and it also needed to be lightweight, demountable and sustainable.

51% studios chose polycarbonate panels over glass to provide acoustic insulation, filter the light and give privacy whilst still being light and easy to transport and handle. Panels were cut to size on site and can be recycled after use.

The framing is from sustainable British grown cedar, adapted from a rainscreen profile we have been using in Dungeness, set back-to-back to provide stiffness whilst supporting the panels without any fixings. Cedar is also lightweight, and weathers to a soft silver over time. We achieved the clean floor to ceiling finish with the help of Tripledot’s fine carpenters who scribed the cedar to the undulating planes of the existing warehouse shell.

We love the clever components Item Products makes for packaging and have used on the their heavier duty handles for the sliding door. We exposed the self finished polycarbonate edge so no frame was needed on the leading edge of the sliding door, allowing it to slot effortlessly into the same cedar detail as the other panels.

For photos and videos of Mumsnet 10th Anniversary Party at Google HQ, do have a look at these links on Flickr or Mumsnet

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

In collaboration with our friends at Johnson Naylor, we have just let the tender for three environmentally conscious studio buildings on the site of the former Trinity Experimental Station in Dungeness.  Nuclear power / Airsource Heatpump.  Locally grown cedar / Matt black concrete.  Shingle roof / Thermal Mass.  Floating slab / Existing footprint. Carefully framed views / Low u values.

‘Drawing on the City – A walk through history’ is an architectural and sculptural project of seven installations conceived as a route through the changing landscape of  Barcelona and St Adria. The route and installations make visible again the cultural heritage and experiences of the people of Barcelona, which has sometimes been overlaid, sometimes forgotten, sometimes displaced …

The new structures embed collective memory and imagery in the cityscape, bringing a continuous and present sense of history to the city by pointing to the real and developing landscape it contains.

Along the route visitors and local residents are able to see and understand the cityscape, becoming aware of essential historical structures and newly developing urban plans.

The work is an active and engaging series of dialogues around the role of the city in the making of communities and individual experience. A positive role is created for both the sculptural scenarios and the audience/participants.

Drawing on the City was exhibited in the Caixa Forum during the summer of 2008. For more information, please see Hannah Collins’ website.

The House of Doors sits at a meeting place between the land and the sea, and makes reference to the sea as a first point of contact for many of the cities early migrants. Floating pale like a ghost, from the moment the first light illuminates the sea to the lower light of the evening, the House of Doors evokes two distinct moments in time: a memory of using doors to build his house in 1962 recounted by a former resident of Somorrostro and a photograph of a home built from 16 wooden doors, taken by Hannah Collins in 2003. The small pontoon tempts swimmers out to use it as a meeting place. For those not swimming it provides a resonant image seen from the shore.

The Portal is the site of the intersection between Cerda’s diagonal, the Tramvia and Avinguda Litoral. It is also a node in a series of walkable and cycable loops linking Barcelona, Barceloneta and Poble Nou with San Adria and Badalona. The portal is an orientation map for the overall project, an extension of the tram platform worked in coloured enamels with each of the seven installations colour coded and linked into the fabric of the city. The portal entices you to explore the neighbourhood, to venture deeper…

In San Adria,at a thriving Tuesday market below the freeway local bird keepers meet to compare, exchange or trade their birds. The Singing bird wall is set in a quiet spot under trees near one of the entrances to the market.

The diverse areas around la Mina were, until recently, home to many horses, kept in backyards and on a horse farm on waste ground. Horses formed an integral way of life in the area and were used to pull recycling carts, for transport and for trade. Recent changes have seen the horses disappear. A place of horses is a happening/event that sees the horses return to la Mina, and is inspired by the work of Muybridge and Asger Jorn at Albisola. A series of identical concrete panels will bear the immaculate detailed evidence of a horse-run through specially prepared troughs on the rivers edge. Once dry they will be tilted and lifted into position on the adjacent retaining wall to form a permanent sculpture.

During the Summer the ground surface of Paseo Cameron is covered in the extraordinary drawing of the children of la Mina. By night-time often the whole plaza of over 200 metres is covered by drawings which are replaced by renewed activity the next day as the drawings fade and are walked off the Plaza. The Wall of Dreams is located in a local cultural centre. It is made from ceramic tiles, various shades of gold in colour which carry imprints of the childrens’ chalk drawings.

Pavilion is a collection of green structures dedicated to providing a series of amenities within the park. It is sited on the raised ground beneath the trees to create a series of discreet spaces which can be open to the sky, shaded by the tree canopy in summer, or in the winter sun.