RENATURED

From Milwaukee – having trouble finding out who made this and in what format – if anyone knows, please post. But it’s beautiful and hideous:

…Making animals part of a building site’s program:
In Wales, artist Gitta Gschwendtner matches new apartments built one for one with bird and bat nesting environments.

Commissioned by the Wales-based public art consultancy Safle,

Animal Wall’ is part of a 50 metre long wall, running along the south-western edge of ‘Strata’, a new residential development in Century Wharf, Cardiff Bay. It can be accessed via the riverside walk leading from Clarence Road towards the city centre. The environmental impact of Cardiff Bay’s extensive development is an ongoing concern and various measures have been put in place to mitigate this. The approach taken for this artwork is to assist wildlife in the area and encourage further habitation. The new housing development of Century Wharf which provides approximately 1,000 new apartments and houses; Gschwendtner’s design for the ’Animal Wall’ will match this with about 1,000 nest boxes for different bird and bat species, integrated into the fabric of the wall that separates the development from the adjacent public riverside walk.

Through consultation with an ecologist, four different sized animal homes have been developed, which have been integrated into a custom-made woodcrete cladding to provide an architecturally stunning and environmentally sensitive wall for Century Wharf. The animal wall also transcends the barrier between the private and the public, with the wildlife roaming freely between the two areas.

The nests are designed specifically to attract bats, starlings, sparrows and blue and grey tits.

“But not everyone will come at the same time,” says Gschwendtner. “Instead there will be a constant turn-around of tenants.”

For the time being the houses will remain empty, as the birds and bats won’t be looking for places to nest until next spring. “Some people are concerned about bird poo,” says Gschwendtner. “But they don’t need to worry. Birds keep it very nice and clean around where they nest.”

– Johanna Agerman, IconEye

Found via Dezeen.

Related (by formal theme,  not  purpose):
Animal Wall designed by William Burges, also sited in Cardiff, built  in 1890:

Rather, the purpose of Burges’ and  Gschwendtner’s designs may be to playfully call attention to animals in our midsts, but the new animal wall attends to the contemporary needs of displaced cohabitants, whereas the 19th century wall simply represents them,  accepting that the animals themselves have ‘gone missing’ in real life.

Another project that is stunning to look at — and slightly vengeful to consider –  won a notable mention at ReBurbia:

Designed ByStéphane Degoutin & Gwenola Wagon – Nogo Voyages

The huge amount of vacant land in the abandoned american suburbs can be used to increase the ruralization of the city. We propose themed neighborhoods, specialized on a few plots of land: the sheep district, the chicken district, the pig district… This would allow neighbours to get in touch to keep or exchange their animals.

We propose developments which are sold as packs.
=
House
+
Land
+
Stockbreeding

Each housing type is associated with a species or a culture. Housing standards are associated with agricultural standards.

Each pack is ready to use. It comes with a user guidebook, a training if needed, a one year guarantee and assistance service (an assistant farmer can be required).

I just came upon this – amazing proposition — looking for post industrial (and post-slurb) utopianizers:

…Calvin Chiu’s Frog’s Dream, which proposes to re-establish a sustainable relationship between city and suburbia by transforming foreclosures (’McMansions’) into wetlands and natural water filtration systems for urban centers. The idea maker speaks of a ‘Living Machine’ of eco-water treatment machines, in which a “micro-ecosystem of plants, algae, bacteria, fish and clams are present to purify the water. A micro-wetland ecosystem will be formed around these mansions to sustain larger wetland animals and plants.”

Chiu won the Grand Prize of the competition, Reburbia.  Hurrah. I was palpitating and flushed when I saw this image.

Lovely article at Art Fag City,  on Google Street View’s incidentally captured moments.

Two years ago, Google sent out an army of hybrid electric automobiles, each one bearing nine cameras on a single pole. Armed with a GPS and three laser range scanners, this fleet of cars began an endless quest to photograph every highway and byway in the free world.

Consistent with the company’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” this enormous project, titled Google Street View, was created for the sole purpose of adding a new feature to Google Maps.

Never hiding its presence, but never announcing its arrival, the Street View vehicle is a systematic pursuer of fleeting moments. continue…