51% Studios

• About us
• Clients
• News
• Home

Imaginative, sustainable & award winning architecture

tel +44 (0)8456 123 991 | email info@51pct.com

• Categories

  • Architecture
  • Art
  • Landscape

• Recent News

  • habi-sabi finalist for inmidtown competition
  • Nestworks exhibited at Arup Phase 2
  • Nestworks honoured in Animal Architecture Awards
  • Birds in the blocks
  • Urban Birds
  • London’s red-jacketed volunteers
  • Shed modernism
  • The Emerald Necklace
  • Cable Suspended Sod Roof
  • Urban Birds Nestworks

• Topics

  Architectural Association Arts Council Awards & Commendations Barcelona Baumhaus Berlin Big Lottery Bridges Chanceprojects Conservation Area Creede Cut + Run Dover Drawing on the City Ecological Enthusiasm Environmental Architecture Fundacio Antoni Tapies Georgian Architecture Kunstwerke La Mina Legacy project Listed Buildings London London Festival of Architecture Mineral County Fairgrounds Mumsnet Towers Nestworks New Build Houses New York Photographers' Gallery Public Art Readymades Recycling Remediation Social Cinema Spain Straight 8 Sustainable Masterplans The Green House Upper Rio Grande Urban Birds Vicco's Tower Whitechapel Art Gallery Workplaces

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.

The Emerald Necklace

The site has a unique loca­tion. The Upper Rio Grande Events and Recre­ation Complex’s grounds and build­ings will be the first thing you see when you approach the his­toric town of Creede, from any direc­tion. Along the Sil­ver Thread Scenic High­way, the site and the Wil­low Creek Con­ser­va­tion Area become one gem in an emer­ald neck­lace of scenic val­leys stretch­ing up the Rio Grande. Pro­pos­als for its devel­op­ment must pro­vide a project which is at once an authen­tic sig­na­ture for Creede and a fit­ting ‘jewel’ in the necklace.

The archi­tec­ture and land­scap­ing is an exten­sion and embod­i­ment of Creede and the very vis­i­ble spirit that has cre­ated it.  The atti­tude and spirit of the moun­tain set­tlers was, and con­tin­ues to be, unique.  Local archi­tec­ture reflects the val­ues and sen­si­bil­i­ties of its peo­ple, and this is par­tic­u­larly vis­i­ble in places some­what off the beaten track, where peo­ple have had to wres­tle with avail­able raw mate­ri­als to sur­vive and to make their livelihoods.

51% stu­dios are using the same kind of think­ing that’s been used for well over 100 years in this val­ley, using the local site con­di­tions and mate­ri­als in frank ways that reflect aware­ness of their inher­ent attributes.

Cable Suspended Sod Roof

Dot­ted around the val­leys near Creede our eye was caught by tra­di­tional sod roofed potato cel­lars. Not only did they sit well in the land­scape, but they used regional mate­ri­als intel­li­gently to cre­ate an authen­tic, inven­tive eco-architecture. Our green roofs are hung on cables tra­di­tion­ally used for min­ing activ­i­ties, using a frac­tion of the mate­r­ial a beam would to sup­port the con­sid­er­able snow loads and addi­tional load of by a green roof. By in addi­tion earth­link­ing the build­ings and using geo-thermal heat, we have brought this home-grown tech­nol­ogy current.

Green roofs have sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits both for the public/community and for the indi­vid­ual build­ing owner. Pri­mary pub­lic ben­e­fits include con­trol­ling stormwa­ter runoff, improv­ing water qual­ity and improv­ing air qual­ity. The most sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits of green roofs for build­ing own­ers are reduc­tions in build­ing oper­at­ing costs, sig­nif­i­cantly longer roof life and lower life-cycle costs for the roof, and increased prop­erty value.

The green roof serves as a fil­ter to reduce pol­lu­tants in the water and also to lower the tem­per­a­ture of the water that is even­tu­ally returned to the watershed.

Although a green roof ini­tially costs more than a con­ven­tional roof — $10 to $20 per square foot for a green roof ver­sus $5 to $10 per square foot for a con­ven­tional roof — they more than make up for that dif­fer­ence over time. Green roofs extend the lifes­pan of the roof mem­brane sig­nif­i­cantly by pro­tect­ing it from sun­light and tem­per­a­ture vari­a­tions. As a result, green roofs can con­ser­v­a­tively be expected to last two to three times longer than a con­ven­tional roof. Expe­ri­ence with green roofs in Ger­many shows that 40+ and 50+ life spans for green roofs should be expected.

Because of their insu­lat­ing prop­er­ties, green roofs reduce the heat­ing and cool­ing costs for build­ings by at least 10 to 15 per­cent. A Cana­dian study showed that a 6-inch exten­sive green roof can reduce heat gains by 95 percent.

On the banks of Wil­low Creek, green roofs will also improve the aes­thetic qual­ity of the build­ings, to soften them and inte­grate with the native prairie land­scape, using desert plants which need low or no maintenance.

The steel struc­ture of the indoor arena how­ever quickly becomes expen­sive if asked to take on a sod roof in addi­tion to snowload­ing. Struc­tures that carry load through pure ten­sion (hang­ing) require  a frac­tion of the mate­r­ial required by bend­ing struc­tures such as beams or trusses and pro­vide an effi­cient way of car­ry­ing an exten­sive green roof in addi­tion to non-uniform snow loads.

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

 

 

Next Page »

• Out & About

  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  •