Insect city explores new approximations to reimagine the boundaries between human and nature, through a site-specific intervention that leaves spaces for new encounters. A public space, as an abstract landscape, composed of a series of geometric wooden pieces that aims to sensitize and raise awareness on ecological and biodiversity values.
The project aims to develop a broader dialogue and new approaches to the diversity of plant and animal life in urban habitats. In this way, the intervention dialogues with the city landscape, creating new ways of coexistence between the natural and built environment. A new hybrid urban landscape, as a housing complex for our cohabiting insects -wasps, bees, beetles or bugs-.
Insect city is located in an undetermined fragment of an urban landscape in the city of Linz, in a transitional area where several natural and cityscapes are diluted together. On the one hand, the site is close to the Danube River and its industrial port, and on the other hand, the site is bounded by a disused railway and the elevated highway. Although the area is characterized as an undefined public space, the site is privileged for its biological richness, since it is located in a self-maintained urban meadow surrounded by houses with orchards and community gardens.
The project has been developed with the support and collaboration of the Architectural Forum of Upper Austria (afo), with the bio-consultancy of the Biologiezentrum, a biology center located in the city of Linz, which has one of the largest insect collection in Europe, and is dedicated to preserving, researching, documenting, exhibiting and transmitting knowledge about the flora and fauna. At the same time, during the process, a positive neighborhood consultation was carried out, with the aim of disseminating the project among local residents as part of their own public space.
