Waag and LAND will organize a meeting and workshops to face the topic of animal-based design in urban planning
Authors : Waag and LAND
On June 21 and 22, Amsterdam Science Park and Waag will hold two days of talks and workshops to explore the different aspects of animal-based design. The goal of these activities is to exchange experiences and best practices in renaturing cities, pay attention to the needs of animals in urban spaces, and learn how to build habitats (nests, houses, feeders…) together with others, with the aim of creating a prototype that can stay in Amsterdam Science Park as a meanwhile accelerator.
These activities are co-organized by T-Lab 4 and T-Lab 5, with the support of T-Lab 3.
Building for beasts
The meeting will start off at Waag on Tuesday 21 June with some short insightful talks and a panel discussion with landscape consultancy LAND. Rosalie Bak (concept developer at Waag) will elaborate on local urban ecology planning, reporting from Waag’s urban ecology hub at Amsterdam Science Park.
‘Nature based solutions’ is a hot topic within urban development. It works on nature based innovation that poses a solution for cities. Think for example of green roofs and city parks that aim to limit the local warming within cities. Within nature based solutions, the human is often the main target group. But what if we also design cities for organisms and start to build for beasts?
Workshops
On Wednesday afternoon 22 June, participants will venture out for two workshops at Startup Village, Amsterdam Science Park. First, they will design and make spaces for two different species, working from the animal’s perspective: what would they need to live, to gather food, to mate and to shelter? Where in the area could we add interventions? And does it make any difference to design an outside space from the perspective of beasts? These workshops will broaden and deepen ‘nature based solutions’ by adding an extra layer from the non-human perspective.