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.
Trinity Experimental Station, Dungeness
Following plenty of old fashioned hard work and skilled craftsmanship by our contractors over the summer, we hope you will share our enjoyment of these in-progress shots of the three new eco-buildings on the site of the former Trinity Experimental Station in Dungeness: the Crosley, Library and Workshop.
The landscape at Dungeness is unique: it is one of the largest expanses of shingle in the world, and as a ‘Site of Special Scientific Interest’, it is home to a rich and diverse community of plant and wildlife. It is dotted with structures ranging from ramshackle timber huts and lighthouses to abandoned military structures as well as a Nuclear Power station, which ironically promotes the surrounding ecology as waste hot water outflow enriches the sea bed, in turn attracting seabirds from miles around.
The coastal climate is harsh with an often unrelenting sea breeze and the treeless landscape providing little in the way of shelter. With the crackling of gunfire at the distant Military Firing Range and the occasional whistle from the local Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch narrow-gauge railway, the site phenomenology is rich.
The Trinity Experimental Station occupies a narrow strip of land that runs between the Old Lighthouse and the seashore. Used as a facility for testing marine apparatus – from engines to anti-corrosive paint finishes – the site is home to a number of inherited structures including a small railway, a radio tower and a building used to test Fog Horns. Fenced off from the surrounding landscape, the shingle habitat contained within is protected by English Nature as home to some of the country’s rarest plant species.
51% Studios were appointed to design three new buildings, with interiors by Johnson Naylor, and to oversee the development of the existing site into a number of individual artist’s studios and workshops. The Crosley Building is the largest of the new buildings and replaces the double volume corrugated shed which was at the entrance of the site. The three interlocking volumes reconnect the building’s scale to the existing structures, whilst creating airy volumes within. Frameless vertical sliding windows arranged on axes focus on contextual icons – the lighthouses, the courtyard, the distant horizon. Externally, a locally sourced rough sawn cedar rainscreen is durable and sustainable, and will age to soft silver finish.
The Library is a small existing masonry structure which once housed the generator for the site. The worn concrete and masonry interiors are retained as a reminder of the buildings industrial heritage, whilst the exterior is overclad with cedar in a matrix referencing and expressing the building’s original structural features.
The Workshop provides space for woodworking and framing. It relates in form and function to the archetypal industrial building with north-facing zinc-clad lights. A glazed corner window frames a stunning view of the coastguard tower with the Channel beyond. The workshop also houses the air source heat pump to provide heat and hot water to the site.
51% Studios’ response to sustainability meant that minimizing the negative environmental impact of construction was a key factor of the design. The new units are constructed as rafts directly onto the existing hard-standing and use pre-cast structural elements whereever possible. All three buildings are super-insulated: the Sea Loft and Generator have shingle roofs to minimize visual impact and improve on thermal mass. All window openings are triple glazed and achieve a u-value of 0.81. The proposed buildings have been designed to achieve Level 4–5 in the Code for Sustainable Homes.
Read about how the concrete slab was recycled here or link to the portfolio page
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.
Out & About
