An Artecology Briefing

Some of the people we work with

Achieving Ecological Net Gain for Green, blue and grey infrastructure

Asset and estate management Building and grounds maintenance Development and investment Community engagement

Corporate CSR and legacy

Vertipool (registered design no. 6009312) • • • • • •

Retrofitting ecological enhancement Field tested and evaluated at PhD level Bioactive design features and textures Installations from the Isle of Wight to Bournemouth and Edinburgh Enabling climate change adaptation on defended coastlines Alleviating ‘coastal squeeze’ for intertidal ecology

Designs to suit local environmental conditions, habitats and ecology. (all of these are marine but bottom right is a pool made in lighter concrete for a school whose ground-level pond had been filled in under the direction of Ofsted because of safety concerns)

Practical solutions Artecology designed a smaller pool for beam installations Boscombe BioBeach – Ecological enhancement and community rockpooling

Proven Performance PhD collaboration with Bournemouth University Faculty of Science and Technology has monitored and evaluated the impact of the Vertipools since 2013. Vertipools replicate, replace and enhance natural shore pools.

New Structures Freshwater/brackish gabion Vertipools in a protected soft cliff landscape (SAC/SSSI) Making new infrastructure biologically favourable in a heavily constrained environment and creating public spectacle and interest for clients

Repurposing waste materials • Recycled tyres in constructed marine habitats.

• Remarkable speed and diversity of colonization • Indicative of the possibilities of upcycling everyday site waste materials and arisings, recombined into beacons of ecological interest

Bioactive Surfaces PhD Collaboration with Glasgow University, studying barnacle recruitment • Accelerating and sustaining colonization for ecological gain • Potential improvements to asset resilience through ‘bioarmouring’

Freshwater Ecology – the Eelevator eel pass A partnership project between Artecology, a Highways PFI and the Environment Agency Exceeding compliance requirements, delivering distinctive environmental quality to infrastructure, creating architectural quality in the public realm and building significance into the places that people see and use.

Urban Terrestrial Our principles are: ‘folded space’ – delivering surface complexity in built forms for maximised ecological activity; and ‘punctuated intervention’ – spacing these loci of high-density biological effect to fit animal and plant dispersal. By means of this approach we can achieve ecological gain on a landscape scale with limited resources and within existing maintenance regimes.

Small sculpted habitats Combining ornamental and curiosity qualities with ecological functionality for public spaces and interactive environments (train stations, office blocks, schools, depots and warehouses etc.)

Ecological Sculpture and Community Engagement combining outreach, interpretation, story-telling and habitat

The Bee Bench Sculpture, public amenity, ecological interpretation, spectacle and habitat, all in one

Ecologically Useful Landscape Design We design planting schemes to fit built interventions. Every species, cultivar and variety is chosen to be edible, in foliage, pollen and nectar, fruit and seed, providing foodplant and forage for target invertebrates, passage migrant birds, local assemblages of wildlife. We choose safe and useful plants capable of self-seeding and sustaining a viable seedbank. We choose structural plants that can support nests and roosts, provide overwintering and hibernation spaces, supply song posts, feeding and display perches (for insects and birds particularly).

Effective and Meaningful Community Engagement The combination of design, making, ecology and climate science makes Artecology a very effective medium for community engagement, local action and outreach. We have worked with the Royal Society to create citizen science activities and learning modules. We have worked with the probation service, young carers and others to develop the therapeutic value of shared ‘making’.

Some Artecology Principles to end on…

Microcosms and Urban Rewilding making small parts of larger built environments fully sustaining in breeding, feeding, wintering and roosting habitats for invertebrate populations = microcosms; then pulling in small mammals and birds, reptiles and amphibians = rewilding.

Punctuated Intervention and the Optimisation of Maintenance Don’t try to do everything everywhere, concentrate all your efforts on maximising carrying capacity in beacon sites and repeat at meaningful intervals, allowing the maintained landscapes in between to deliver basic and ancillary ecosystem services without the need for wholesale change.

Magic Numbers Up and Down Look at the vertical realm too – from soil and pond biomes to herbaceous, shrub, canopy/small house, tall tree/tall house, very tall buildings, all within the 200m where just about everything goes on.

Range, Territory and Dispersal Think about the distribution of your ‘beacon’ projects in the landscape and try to map them to both dispersal distances for small wildlife and activity ranges for people. For example many songbird territories, invertebrate and small mammal foraging ranges are about 100 – 200m. Make a concentrated impact, search for another spot with 100m and then another, and so on. 500m is the typical zone of activity and action for people, neighbourhoods, communities. Overlap and integrate the metrics.

Fold and Perforate How can you squeeze large surface areas into small spaces, either by folding, or by lamellae, or by cirri, or by perforation – most things are over-engineered and have tolerances that can easily accommodate some customising, or patch in new texture when repairing.

Flat Earth Syndrome Can we please stop creating flat grass pointlessness just in order to then be able to easily mow it, for no one, for ever. Lumpy topography, ephemeral pools, voids and tunnels, mow a metre strip around the edge to signal intent to the watching world and let wildlife, and people, enjoy the open affordancy.

Human Ecology We are biological organisms, our relationship with our own environment is critical to our wellbeing and therefore to public life. We have forgotten how to build habitats for humans. Artecology principles work for us and for the natural world and connects us better and more sustainably.

Call us for an Artecology Audit of your site. We’ll help you unlock net gain for biodiversity, and environmental advantage for your company. http://www.artecology.space/ https://www.facebook.com/artecologyltd/ https://twitter.com/artecologyltd/ ian@artecology.design 07834 547144