Urban Birds: Nestworks 1 2 3
51% studios has designed three Nestworks for the urban birds of Bankside featuring a series of sophisticated readymades: blocks, boughs and bushes as part of the London Festival of Architecture.
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 4th July. Peregrine viewings at the Tate are daily from 12 noon to 7pm, 17 July to 12 September 2010.
Drawing on the City
A collaborative work by Catherine du Toit and Peter Thomas of 51% studios with artist Hannah Collins.
‘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.
