Living like animals: Do we need to build more homes for wildlife?
As the global construction industry negatively impacts and encroaches on animal habitats, could and should we approach building our homes with animals in mind? Writer Paul Dobraszczyk tells Laura Smith the Honest Truth about the need for animal architectu
What is animal architecture?
Firstly, it refers to structures that animals build themselves: for example, birds’ nests or termite mounds. Secondly, it means buildings created for animals such as stables or shelters. Thirdly, it means animals that live alongside us in our buildings, like swallows nesting in barns or spiders weaving their webs in corners of rooms.
It’s important because we need to care more about the animals that live alongside us, particularly ones that aren’t pets. This is because of the sheer loss of animals in recent years, mainly on account of humans taking up more and more space and resources on the planet.
Who are some of nature’s best builders?
It’s amazing to see how many different types of animals build: there’s the obvious ones like bees, birds and beavers but there’s also a type of fish
– a male pufferfish – that uses its mouth and fins to create an elaborate sand sculpture decorated with shells to impress female pufferfish. The most extraordinary builders have to be bowerbirds, the males of which create highly decorative “bowers” simply to attract females.
What impact has the construction industry had on wildlife habitats?
It has the largest carbon footprint of any industry. It accounts for at least 40% of all global carbon emissions, mainly due to the enormous quantities of energy needed to make cement, glass and steel.
There’s also the land destroyed by buildings themselves, not to mention what results from all the mining, quarrying and digging to extract building materials from the earth.
The construction industry can be far less destructive than it currently is by changing the materials we build from, by being much more willing not to build at all and by building in ways that “give back” to the environments we disturb or destroy.
How can architecture incorporate the potential for animals as co-inhabitants?
American architect Joyce Hwang has recently created a structure called a Habitat Wall that accommodates humans and urban animals like bats, raccoons and birds.
This is about redefining what a wall can be – not just an impermeable barrier between inside and outside but something much more interesting and “alive”.
Can you give us some examples of positive animal architecture?
Artist duo Something & Son built an amazing swift tower in Cambridge that mimics a sunset in Africa (where swifts live in the winter months).
Swift towers are designed to mitigate the loss of these migrant bird populations that has occurred in recent years, sometimes because the usual places where swifts like to nest (in gaps in the eaves of roofs) are increasingly being sealed up.
Any Scottish examples?
An interesting example is artist Tim Knowles’s Howff Project, in which he created a network of shelters in the Scottish mountains over the course of two years. These were built for human occupation but very much in the spirit of encouraging us to inhabit them like animals.
In this project, they’re often almost indistinguishable from the environment they sit within, using the barest minimum of materials and disturbance of what already exists.
What are your favourite example of animals and humans cohabiting in harmony?
The Bangkok Studio’s Elephant World in Surin Province in Thailand, completed in 2020. Although it sounds like a zoo or theme-park, it’s actually a radical way of housing both humans and domesticated elephants. There’s a canopied playground structure for both elephants and people, as well as an elephant museum and a brick observation tower (for humans). It’s such an interesting project because it accepts that, if elephants are to survive in the future, then many of them will have to be semi-domesticated animals, as they have been in Thailand for centuries.