[News] from [guardian.co.uk]
[Environment > Endangered habitats]
Sir Peter Scott centenary marked by new home for endangered bats
Maev Kennedy
The Guardian, Monday 14 September 2009 Article history
A gleaming white cube that the Turner prize winner Jeremy Deller calls "a luxury hotel for bats" will be unveiled today to mark the centenary of the birth of the naturalist and wildlife artist Sir Peter Scott.
The £120,000 bat house has been built at the London Wetland Centre by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust founded by Scott. The only child of Scott of the Antarctic, Scott was born on 14 September, 1909, and was dubbed "conservation's patron saint" by Sir David Attenborough.
The complex of ponds and shallow lakes at the centre in Barnes, west London – created 10 years ago from a derelict waterworks – is home to hundreds of native and migrating birds as well as thousands more plant and animal species, including rare moths and butterflies, dragonflies, frogs and water voles. At dusk, bats, increasingly endangered in the south-east, hunt through the mist of insects hovering over the water. Of the 17 native British species of bat, eight have been spotted at Barnes.
Along with brass bands, acid house music, bicycles, processions, and tin badges, Deller loves bats. He sees them in trouble, their flight paths disrupted by lighting, their roosts in trees and old buildings vanishing under concrete. He persuaded the Wetland Centre to add a bat house to its wildlife habitats, and organised an international design competition that attracted hundreds of entries from schoolchildren, architects, and members of the public. The sleek, white and modern design is by two architecture students, Jorgen Tandberg from Oslo and Yo Murata from Tokyo, who met at the Architectural Association college in London.
It incorporates homes for several species of bats, designed on the advice of the Bat Conservation Trust.
The box, which has an invisible black roof to make the interior warmer, is built of Hemcrete, an environmentally friendly mixture of hemp fibre and lime that holds layers of computer-cut fretwork panels, which are not just decorative but incorporate the small, dry, dark spaces bats love.
"It's great," Deller said. "I wouldn't mind living there myself."
[Environment > Endangered habitats]
Sir Peter Scott centenary marked by new home for endangered bats
Maev Kennedy
The Guardian, Monday 14 September 2009 Article history
A gleaming white cube that the Turner prize winner Jeremy Deller calls "a luxury hotel for bats" will be unveiled today to mark the centenary of the birth of the naturalist and wildlife artist Sir Peter Scott.
The £120,000 bat house has been built at the London Wetland Centre by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust founded by Scott. The only child of Scott of the Antarctic, Scott was born on 14 September, 1909, and was dubbed "conservation's patron saint" by Sir David Attenborough.
The complex of ponds and shallow lakes at the centre in Barnes, west London – created 10 years ago from a derelict waterworks – is home to hundreds of native and migrating birds as well as thousands more plant and animal species, including rare moths and butterflies, dragonflies, frogs and water voles. At dusk, bats, increasingly endangered in the south-east, hunt through the mist of insects hovering over the water. Of the 17 native British species of bat, eight have been spotted at Barnes.
Along with brass bands, acid house music, bicycles, processions, and tin badges, Deller loves bats. He sees them in trouble, their flight paths disrupted by lighting, their roosts in trees and old buildings vanishing under concrete. He persuaded the Wetland Centre to add a bat house to its wildlife habitats, and organised an international design competition that attracted hundreds of entries from schoolchildren, architects, and members of the public. The sleek, white and modern design is by two architecture students, Jorgen Tandberg from Oslo and Yo Murata from Tokyo, who met at the Architectural Association college in London.
It incorporates homes for several species of bats, designed on the advice of the Bat Conservation Trust.
The box, which has an invisible black roof to make the interior warmer, is built of Hemcrete, an environmentally friendly mixture of hemp fibre and lime that holds layers of computer-cut fretwork panels, which are not just decorative but incorporate the small, dry, dark spaces bats love.
"It's great," Deller said. "I wouldn't mind living there myself."
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