Reinventing the City: A workshop on habitecture for wildlife
Namrata Shrestha, Senior Research Scientist at Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Adjunct Professor at University of Toronto
Presentation title: “Roadside Ecology”
Road networks are fundamental to the modern society. Just as road network empower socio-economic systems; they often do so at the expense of natural systems that provide numerous ecosystem functions and services. These include loss and fragmentation of wildlife habitat, increased wildlife-vehicle collisions, and creation of barriers to wildlife movement to areas necessary for completing their life-cycle needs. This is especially true in the urban landscapes where the natural cover is already under multiple stresses, such as in the Region of Peel located within the Greater Toronto Area, which is one of the highly urbanized areas of Canada, yet maintains substantial portion of the jurisdiction in largely rural and semi-rural land uses. This study used the fundamental concepts of wildlife movement ecology and road ecology in conjunction with spatial analysis techniques to develop a multi-scale spatially explicit model that identifies ecologically strategic locations for enhancing landscape connectivity for urban wildlife.
Marcus Owens, PhD Candidate University of California, Berkeley
Presentation title: “Architecture and Design for Nonhuman Animals”
What are animals doing in design? To answer this question, we analyze a small sample of contemporary animal design projects, taken both from the oeuvres of established practitioners as well as one-off projects and competition entries circulating on design culture media platforms. These projects are analyzed by parameters such as species, design typology, function, and scale to better understand the landscape of contemporary nonhuman design. This paper also considers what it means to pose such a question, located at the intersection of human-animal studies (HAS) with its attention to relations between humans and animals, and design studies, whose domain is framed by studies of technology and visual culture. The intersection between these domains is increasingly pertinent given market-driven advances in biotechnology and genomic sequencing and the relationship of design to the libidinal late-capitalist economies of attention, consumption, and innovation. This paper suggests that the aesthetic practice of design provides an ideal forum for bringing the question of animality into studies of technics and technology.
Sarah Gunawan, MA Architecture, Faculty of Architecture University of Waterloo
Presentation title: “Synanthropic Suburbia”
The paper investigates the suburbs and engage the space of greatest tension between human and animal — the domestic territory of the house. How can the multiplications of small scale, architectural interventions influence large scale territorial systems and patterns? Synanthropic Suburbia seeks to answer this question throughdesign experiments that position six animal species as active players engaging their habitat. It re-imagines conventional building components as a hybrid systems that augment the single family home and define the physical interface between human and non-human species.
Brad Gate, Founder, AAA Gates
Presentation title: “Wildlife Control Wildlife Proofing Your Home”
AAA Gates’ Wildlife Control is internationally recognized as a pioneer for its approach in applying scientifically sound humane solutions. Mr. Gates discusses the range of designs he has developed for the ethical removal of animals including heat boxes for young, one way doors, and a series of best practices for wildlife removal.