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.

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]

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

We were briefed to modernize the Whitechapel’s back of house, carrying new identity into these spaces in fresh and playful ways. The desire for soft, organic materials and low embodied energy led to the sourcing of a reclaimed gymnasium floor, re-laid throughout with the original sports markings left intact.

The kitchen allows informal lunches as well as more formal staff meetings and presentations, with ‘ideas shelves’ for improvisory mini exhibitions, with pin boards and new lockers for visiting exhibition staff.

The director’s office is reconfigured to allow extra space for meetings. Large transparent sliding screens replace existing painted timber doors to optimise natural day lighting in all offices, simultaneously enhancing the sense of community between team members.

Original desking is kept, and resurfaced, overhead cabinets are re-used for storage and workstations personalised with individual roll out libraries.

Roof spaces will be insulated with locally sourced materials and relined to provide additional storage which will improve both energy efficiency and comfort levels.

Vicco’s Tower frames specific views and creates particular qualities of light in each space. From the study, a ‘panorama’ window frames the garden as a landscape. A double height vertical glass slot shows a London Plane — one of the original avenue planted by the Georgians. A horizontal slot at bath height allows a very private contemplation of the garden. And above the sky.

51% studios’ artist client AK Dolven says: “To be able to bathe in the moonlight and a shower under a tree is something I thought was only possible in the remote place I come from in Norway. With this inside-outside space I can continue these elemental experiences in East London.” . In a dense urban environment, nature gains in focus and beauty: architecture as lens.

Materials have been designed to wear well and age gracefully, with minimal finishing or product applications. Money was spent to ensure adequate glass insulation and a full house water purification system from the pure H2O company to support our clients health and negate the need for adding to the recycling pile with bottled water.

Vicco’s Tower won an RIBA London Award in 2008 and has been shortlisted for the Georgian Group Architectural Award and a Grand Designs Award. RIBA Awards are given for buildings that have high architectural standards and make a substantial contribution to the local environment.

“Vicco’s tower is a rear garden extension of a traditional small Hackney house to give a new stacked kitchen, study and master bathroom in that order for a Norwegian artist living in London. You cannot help being mesmerized by the artist’s own touches so a modest project becomes one of singular aesthetic consistency.

The extension addresses the back garden with an area of nearly 100% glazing in the lower ground kitchen such that it feels almost like one was cooking out of doors. Above this is suspended a two storey solid wood tower containing the more private study, entirely lined with birch plywood followed by a large bathroom which has an entire glass roof and brilliant light.

Altogether a very successful building from modest but sure means.” RIBA website

To see AK Dolvens work, please visit: www.akdolven.com Photographer Vegar Moen is at www.vegarmoen.com

Working with Dewhurst Macfarlane, David Bennett and Peter Deer Associates, we recently developed a GGBS concrete structure with a self finished interior to create thermal flywheel. Adjustable vertical louvres protect the exposed west façade from over heating, water is harvested for use in the garden and an airsource heat pump works with southfacing solar panels on the roof to lessen reliance on the grid.

A slim pool in the basement is planned in a later phase.

The project due on site later this year. The 51pct Project team is Cathi, Hazel, Anderson, Jack, George and Peter. The Quantity Surveor is Jackson Coles

This was one of our first projects and still one of our favourites.

12 years ago we fell in love with this Georgian railway workers’ cottage with eccentric works, even though (or maybe because) all the best bits had been ripped out in the 60’s and it was terribly rundown … but it had a garden that had once been loved and three doors onto Little Green Street and one onto College Lane. We added a timber lined interior and started gardening even before we started the construction.

Films of love, longing and labour: At the invitation of the Whitechapel Gallery and the artists, we transformed galleries in the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Kunstwerke, and Fundacio Antoni Tapies in Barcelona into a film makers club-room, three beautiful curtained cinema spaces, and an archive lounge.

Enthusiasm investigated how the amateur, the enthusiast or the hobbyist works invisibly within the relentless flow of ‘official’ culture, frequently adopting a counter-cultural tone of tactical resistance and criticism.  In Poland under socialism even leisure was organised through factory-sponsored associations, and yet these film-makers activities became a space for dreams of love, criticism and freedom.