Beyond the Hive Competition 2010 creates a buzz
The City Gardens recently teamed up with partners British Land
to create an exciting architectural competition called ’Beyond the
Hive’, which celebrates 2010 being the International Year of
Biodiversity.
The competition has been a great success, bringing together the
skills of the property sector, ecologists and landscape architects
to design and build luxury accommodation for key insect and
invertebrate species in the City. The design brief asked for
proposals for ecologically sustainable and creative insect habitats
in the form of ‘Insect Hotels’.
The entries were fantastic, and have resulted in five finalist
‘Insect Hotels’ being built in June and which can still be seen in
public gardens around the City. The five finalists and their
locations are as follows:
- Bunhill Fields – ‘InnVertibrate’ by ORTLOS
Space Engineering and Metalanguage Design.
- West Smithfield – ‘The Bumblebee City Nesters’
by Fisher Tomlin (Professional Garden Designers &
Landscapers).
- Postman’s Park – ‘Brookfield Bug Buddies’ by
Brookfield Europe in collaboration with consultants Arup, DP9,
Hilson Moran Partnership and Sir John Cass’s Foundation
school.
- St Dunstan’s in the East - ‘The Insect Hotel’
by Arup Associates.
- Cleary Garden – ‘Beevarian Antsel and Gretal
Chalet’ by the organisation ‘German Women in Property’.
From those shortlisted two winners were selected, one from the
online public vote, and the other from a panel of expert
judges.
The judges included Paul Finch (Chairman of CABE, Programme
Director of the World Architecture Festival, and editor of emeritus
of Architectural Review and Architects’ Journal), Sarah Henshall
(Brownfield Officer, Buglife), Adrian Penfold (Head of Planning
& Environment, British Land), Graham Stirk (Senior Director,
Roger Stirk Harbour & Partners), and Peter Wynne Rees (The City
Planning Officer, City of London).
The finalists were assessed by the judges on architectural design,
environmental responsibility and community involvement. The winner
of the judges’ vote was ‘The Insect Hotel’, located at St Dunstan’s
in the East, by Arup Associates.
The façade of ‘The Insect Hotel’ consists of a series of
compartments based on a Voronoi pattern. This pattern is found in
the natural world, as in the rib structure of a dragonfly’s wing,
and bears a close resemblance to honeycomb. The ‘compartments’
created by the pattern contain a variety of recycled waste
materials and deadfall loosely inserted into the voids. The
structure thereby caters for the needs of stag beetles, solitary
bees, spiders, lacewings and ladybirds, with the sides of the hotel
also accessible for butterflies and moths. The top of this insect
hotel is suitable for absorbing rainwater via planting.
The winner of the public vote online was the ‘Beevarian Antsel and
Gretal Chalet’, at Cleary Garden, by the organisation German Women
in Property. . This insect hotel is based on a traditional Bavarian
mountain chalet, and features reclaimed bricks to attract solitary
bees, rotten logs for invertebrates, louvered boxes filled with
bark for hibernating butterflies, a log drilled with holes for
ladybirds and eaves filled with bamboo for lacewings.
An awards ceremony was held on 1July 2010 at Bunhill Fields to
award ‘Golden Beetle’ trophies to the two winners.
For details of where to see all five of these unique insect
hotel finalists and a walk linking them all, you can download the
‘Insect Hotel Crawl’ brochure via the link below:
Download the Insect Hotel Crawl
here (312kb)
For further information and details please visit
www.britishland.com/beyondthehive
New Playgrounds for the City
Work is currently underway by the City’s Play Partnership to
build two new playgrounds in the City, one at Tower Hill Gardens
and another at King George’s Field, also known as Portsoken Street
Garden.
The new City playgrounds seek to deliver objectives set out in
the recent Play and Open Space Strategies. Consultation
exercises carried out for these strategies identified that local
residents wanted more areas for their children to play in within
the City. Funding was provided by Government Department for
Children, Schools and Families' 'Playbuilder’ project.
An emphasis has been placed on introducing natural play to both
areas by including plants, mounding of the lawn areas and using
natural materials. The play equipment being installed includes a
bouncing flower, rotating disc, hut and slide (at Tower Hill
Garden) along with jumping discs, balancing blocks and wind pipes
(at Portsoken Street). Both gardens will be open from the
28 April 2010.
Guided tours
An alternative way to discover the joys of the gardens'
histories and appreciate the wide range of planting, some of which
is very unusual, is to join a walk with the
City of London Guides, who are trained in the history and
horticulture of the gardens.
Walking tours around the City Gardens take place on
Saturdays and Sundays, from April until the end of
September 2010. Meet at the Information Centre, St Paul's
Churchyard at 1.30 pm, there is no need to book. The cost for
the walk is £6 per person with concessions at the Guide's
discretion. The walks generally last around two hours
Tours are also available around Bunhill Fields Burial Ground.
Although outside the City boundary it is owned and managed by the
City of London. Walks will be taking
place from April to September 2010 on
Wednesdays at 12.30pm, beginning at the gardeners hut. The cost of
the walk is £5 per person.
If you have a large group, would prefer to arrange a walk at a
different time of year or day please
contact the City
Gardens Office to make arrangements.