Archinect - News

Historic lion house at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo shines in new light

2021-11-19T14:10:00-05:00

Goettsch Partners has announced the completion of the Pepper Family Wildlife Center, a $41 million renovation, restoration, and expansion of the historic lion house at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo.

Image: © Tom Harris

The new 54,000-square-foot facility nearly doubles the size of the previous lion habitat, providing increased transparency and a more immersive experience for visitors. Designed in collaboration with Seattle-based zoo exhibit specialists PJA, the habitat focuses on providing choices for the animals and enhancing wellbeing, from thermal comfort zones for heating and cooling to intricate rockwork and trees for climbing.

Image: © Tom Harris

The original lion house was designed by architect Dwight Perkins and completed in 1912. In 2005, it was designated a Chicago Landmark, celebrated for its decorative brickwork and terra-cotta ornament, lion mosaics, and grand hall with its vaulted Guastavino tile ceiling. The design team worked closely with the Commission on Chicago Landm...

Beavers: Nature's landscape architects

2019-07-12T15:54:00-04:00

In California and Oregon, beavers are enhancing wetlands that are critical breeding habitat for salmonids, amphibians, and waterfowl. In Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, environmental groups have partnered with ranchers and farmers to encourage beaver activity on small streams. Watershed advocates in California are leading a campaign to have beavers removed from the state’s non-native species list, so that they can be managed as a keystone species rather than a nuisance.

Writing in Places Journal, landscape designer Stacy Passmore explores the amazing landscapes beavers create when they are allowed to fulfill their natural role as environmental engineers.

More and more, beavers and humans have become partners in reshaping the landscapes of the American west, where, Passmore reports, the aquatic mammals have been deployed to remediate defunct mines, re-wild marginal lands, and boost biodiversity as they restore wetlands and other riparian landscapes.

The beavers, according to Passmore, are "subversive animals are rewriting the landscape, changing its topography, without hardly anybody registering the change."

It's likely that in the future, humans and beavers will work together more and more, as climate change reshapes the world's natural environments. But dont count on them to fix climate change. Passmore writes: "As beavers are 'reintroduced' to more areas, we should remember that we cannot restore historic conditions. We must conceptualize a mes...

This modern backyard bat house raises awareness on a natural form of pest control and bat conservation

2018-10-26T16:25:00-04:00

In response to the increasing number of mosquitoes and other pesky insects that climate change is bringing about, BatBnB is one company that wants people to be less reliant on harmful chemicals and pay attention to a more natural form of pest control: Bats!

Co-founded by Harrison Broadhurst (an architectural designer at Nomi Design) and Christopher Rännefors (a Sales & Operations Manager at Google Fiber), BatBnB designs stylish, bat expert-approved houses that mimic bats' natural habitat and provide them with a safe environment to sleep, stay, and raise their pups. With these houses, Broadhurst and Rännefors want to show that bats aren't the filthy blood-thirsty pests many people assume they are. In fact, bats can eat thousands of insects in one night, making them a better form of pest control.

Image via BatBnB.

Made from rot-resistant cedar, the BatBnB currently comes in three sleek designs and can be installed on a house, barn, pole, or tree. It c...

Scientists discover "Octlantis", an underwater city engineered by octopuses

2017-09-20T15:02:00-04:00

The octopuses didn’t just drift toward the same secure-looking outcroppings, though. Once there, they built piles out of shells from scallops, clams, and other animals they ate, then sculpted the piles into dens, “making these octopuses true environmental engineers,”

Scientists have found a new example of animal architecture, this time a city made by usually solitary octopuses. Named Octlantis, this underwater city is engineered by a group of 15 octopuses. Octopuses are known to be builders of their own habitat but, until now, had not be discovered to live in groups. Researchers observed the animals "congregating, communicating, dwelling together, and even evicting each other from dens."

(Un)natural Architectures: Scorpion Design Temperature-Controlled Burrows

2014-07-03T19:28:00-04:00

Scientists have discovered that scorpions design their burrows to include both hot and cold spots. A long platform provides a sunny place to warm up before they hunt, whilst a humid chamber acts as a cool refuge during the heat of the day.

This recent discovery of scorpion architecture adds to a sizeable list of impressive non-human architecture.

Anthills consist of a complex network of paths. Comparative to the size of an individual ant, these structures are mega-skyscrapers.

Likewise, termites build huge structures that have been dubbed "cathedrals." Reaching up to 6m high or more, termite cathedrals are clustered in large arrays that cover whole landscapes.

This complex web of branches was built by the vogelkop gardener bowerbird. In direct refutation of the "less is more" aesthetic exemplified by both ants and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, these birds embellish their structures with any bright things they can find.

Primates, including humans, are probably the most avid builders. For example, from an early age, orangutans learn to design and construct elaborately woven nests high in trees.

Far from trivial – and humor aside –, studying animal architectures helps destabilize the normative understanding of architecture as a...

Birds were the original architects

2013-06-26T01:24:00-04:00

Chee Pearlman, a design consultant and curator, ventured that nests are “probably the purest antidote to the heavy steel-and-concrete building footprints that, city by mega-city, are overtaking the globe.”

Penelope Green explores the work of a number of contemporary "nest" makers such as Jayson Fann and Porky Hefer, who make nests for relaxation, comfort or pleasure. Ms. Green also discusses some recent examples of Twigitecture created as either fine art or performance art.

Bat Cloud

2012-08-03T12:33:00-04:00

“Bat Cloud,” as her creation is called, is an unusual array of hanging bat houses installed at the refuge in May by the University at Buffalo architecture professor with the help of current and former students.