“These are floating gardens that are often planted with native plants,” said Lisa Shaw, artistic director of Biomatrix Water. places where nature struggles to hold its own, places where there are hard-edged concrete or sheet pile banks that don’t allow plants to grow naturally.”
Since 2012, 4,839 of these Floating Ecosystems have been used to help restore 153 bodies of water and waterways around the world, including London’s Regent Canal, a historically degraded industrial waterway.
“There are butterflies, bees, bugs, moorhens, coots, and sparrows that fly and eat from the plants,” reports Dave Bedford, co-chair of the Lower Regents Coalition, a London community group working to encourage – return to the canal. “If you look under the islands, you will see many fish taking shelter. It looks great and it provides important habitat for wildlife in the urban environment. It’s better on so many levels!”
“It’s important to know that the nature-centered building is also building for the future.”
A growing body of scientific research shows how restored canals can also significantly improve the quality of life of local residents. Researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University recently published data showing that people living within 700 meters of a restored canal experienced health benefits after the restoration, including a reduced risk of heart disease. heart, hypertension, stroke, and diabetes.
While floating ecosystems are designed to repair waterways, other urban innovators are looking for bridges to pass through. done rivers and streams. That includes NEXT Architects of the Netherland who designed the Vlotwateringbrug, known as the “bat bridge,” in Westland, a town in the western Netherlands.
Westland has recently implemented a landscape design aimed at creating the best conditions for insects and animals. When plans were made for a bridge to span one of the local waterways, it was discovered that the bridge’s location was in the middle of the flight route for many species of bats, some of which were severely reduced due to of loss of residence. Another obstacle is the last thing endangered bat species need, so NEXT decided to pivot and approach the bridge as “a unique opportunity for a bat-friendly design.”
“Ecological requirements are not an additional feature added after the design,” the company said in a report on the bridge. “Instead, they form the backbone and the starting point for the bridge.”
The design team collaborated with bat experts from the Dutch Mammal Association to determine the best features for bats to be physically designed into the bridge. The result was a bridge built with a thicker section on the north side to provide winter shelter for bats, along with spaces under the bridge and a custom brick balustrade to house the bats during the summer. The spaces under the bridge are designed to be wide enough for bats to enter but narrow enough to keep predators out. No bat-friendly detail has been overlooked – the edges of the panels have been given a hard finish so that bats can easily cling to their surfaces.
The bridge, said bat expert Marcel Schillemans from the Dutch Mammal Association, is “a textbook example of how a functional object can at the same time serve nature.” While the bats have not yet populated the bridge, it was built as part of a long-term strategy, “where the environment is changing and also the bat populations are changing,” Schillemans said. “It is important to know that the nature-centered building is also building for the future, not just for the immediate use of animals.”
OF ALL THE DIVISIONS between nature and the built environment, none is as defined as that between land and sea. Tons of cement and rock were dumped along the beach in the latest “us vs them” environmental war. However, it has long been ignored the damage these sea walls have done to “them” side of the equation, and how this damage has also worsened conditions for “us,” especially with rising sea levels. Finally, there is a growing understanding that a sustainable future requires the transformation of the barricades that become the bastion of life.
To that end, San Diego, California, recently installed an additional 1,000 feet of shoreline protection along its coastline to guard against rising sea levels. In the past, large flat rock slabs would have been used, often resulting in ecological dead zones for vulnerable coastal species due to the lack of cracks, textures, and natural contours that were originally beach beaches offered before.
To nurture coastal species and habitats, the city installed “Coastalock,” a new type of coastal barrier made by the company, ECOncrete, with shapes that mimic tide pool habitats. and a specially textured surface to encourage the growth of helpful plants and algae. cleaning the water and providing nutrients to coastal species.
The barrier provides “sustainable lakes for marine species to live in and rehabilitate fish habitats to enjoy cooler temperatures and organic living surfaces, while creating a vast carbon sink in process,” said ECOncrete on their website.
In Australia, the Reef Design Lab and the Sydney Institute of Marine Science are working to rebuild aquatic habitats on existing seawall barricades by using custom-designed “habitat panels” to restore damage done to coastal areas during development.
“Many artificial marine structures such as seawalls, docks, and pontoons are very different from natural coastlines such as rocky beaches and mangroves,” said Aria Lee, who is in charge of the project, labeled Living Seawalls. . “This results in lower biodiversity and fewer native species living in these artificial structures. Living Seawalls has developed an eco-engineering solution for enhancing marine life in new or existing seawalls. Modular habitat panels that mimic natural features – such as rock-pools, crevices, and hollows – are fitted to seawalls to increase habitat selection for marine life to enhance biodiversity in artificial marine structures. .
