Design: Double Happiness (Nerea Feliz & Joyce Hwang)
Location: The Bentway Studio (55 Fort York Blvd), Toronto
Assistants: Alice Hwang, Laurice Hwang, Michelle A Franks, Alice Hwang, Laurice Hwang, , Alice Hwang, Laurice Hwang.
Fabrication: Spielman Fabrication, WRGeorgi Fabrication
Engineers: Blackwell
Habitat fabrication: Jonathan Anderson Design + Technology Lab – The Creative School Toronto Metropolitan University
Multispecies Lounge, a project commissioned by The Bentway, aims to make visible under-acknowledged non-human populations, that are active participants of urban life in Toronto, by attracting them and bringing attention to their presence. The project is a constructed environment for shared co-occupation, where a series of multispecies urban furnishings integrate bird houses, insect habitats, hibernacula for smaller terrestrial animals, and seating for humans.
The project helps to raise awareness about the urban wildlife that traverse and reside within the built environment in and around Canoe Landing Park in Toronto. Habitat conditions in the project cater towards familiar species of popular appeal, such as American Robins, Barn Swallows, and other charismatic songbirds, while equally providing refuge for less-recognized urban fauna such as solitary bees and Dekay’s brown snake. The project also facilitates information about a selection of local urban wildlife. Through QR codes, an acoustic component of the project, the “Lounge Voices”, is available to play in any device. Lounge Voices consist of a series of first-person narratives about these species’ epic stories of survival and adaptation to the city.
Using renewable resources such as red cedar, as well as recycled materials like discarded construction waste, the project’s material ecology advocates for circular economies in design and construction. A series of gabions filled with concrete debris from an adjacent demolition site serve both as above ground foundations and habitats for local insects and reptiles. Ten eight-feet tall towers hold a range of bird house types (box, shelve and cup form) to accommodate for different nesting necessities. Lower cedar towers incorporate seven insect hotels. Both the bird houses and the insect habitats are independent from the seats and we anticipate that they will be donated for educational purposes to schools in the surrounding neighborhood. Thirty-two seats for people, complete this outdoor lounge.
Multispecies Lounge offers glimpses of how birds and insects see beyond the human eye giving visitors the opportunity to experience the installation visually through black light, amplifying visual perception through a more-than-human lens. By creating a leisure space for interspecies encounters Multispecies Lounge seeks to cultivate environmental awareness and a sense of intimacy between us, and other life forms that inhabit the city, fostering respect, curiosity and even admiration towards their formidable resilience.
To approximate the urban experience of nonhuman citizens, the installation features UV reflective graphics, as a nod toward insects and birds, and their ability to see beyond the light spectrum visible to humans. The surfaces of the habitats are decorated with a series of patterns that change appearance under UV light, much like natural patterns present in nature that are invisible to the human eye.