FACADES WITH ANIMAL HABITAT

PEST WALL / HABITAT WALL
Buffalo, New York
2011–

Ants of the Prairie

Piggybacking Tactic
Inhabit a Niche

Beyond rooftops and basements, the vertical surfaces of buildings present opportunities for piggybacking that Joyce Hwang of Buffalo-based Ants of the Prairie explores in the projects PEST WALL and HABITAT WALL. These projects intensify the three-dimensional articulation of building facades to maximize their potential to double as habitat for species such as bats or birds. Hwang’s projects recognize that other users—other species in this case—already inhabit hidden niches within the spaces we construct. Her work seeks to render these conditions both “visible…and aesthetically intensified.” This approach challenges deeply held cultural assumptions about the range of users that architecture typically designs for and is aimed at “constructing interventions which mediate between the human and the animal world.”