Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
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... View full entry
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,” — CityLab
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... View full entry
For the first few seconds you’re blind in the darkness. Then a reflex forces your pupils wider and your photoreceptor rod cells become more sensitive, sending a neural signal that alerts you to four glowing cubes that seem to be floating in mid-air in front of your body. It takes another few... View full entry
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. — Science Daily
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... View full entry
We’ve previously looked at buildings designed to look like other things (care to live in a giant conch shell, anyone?), as well as crazy structures shaped like fruit (a roundup surprisingly dominated by oranges and tomatoes). But a post over on MetaFilter got us thinking about the zoological forms that buildings occasionally take on. — Flavorwire
Ned Dodington, founder of AnimalArchitecture.org, today announced the winners of the 2012 Animal Architecture Awards. This year's competition, titled "URBAN ANIMAL", called for designs that reshape, expand and redefine the context of urban thought and space while keeping in mind the needs (and possible benefits) of synanthropic species — wild animals that “live near, and benefit from, an association with humans and the somewhat artificial habitats that humans create around them”. — bustler.net
See also: Bat Cloud, the top award winner, previously in the Archinect News. View full entry
The winning entries for the 2011 Animal Architecture Awards have just been announced. Now in its third year, the award contest "All Creatures Great & Small" invited critical and unpublished essays and projects to address how architecture can mediate and encourage multiple new ways of species learning and benefiting from each other - or as the organizers call it, to illustrate cospecies coshaping. — bustler.net
