London Builds an Insect Hotel to Keep Helpful Bugs in Residence

By Clay Dillow Posted 07.13.2010 at 2:58 pm 5 Comments

ARUP's Winning Bug Hotel Design British Land

Most architects design structures with the hope that bugs won't take up residence inside, but design house ARUP (the same architects who dreamed up Beijing's CCTV tower) is hoping all kinds of insects and spiders will check into its Bug Hotel, a special habitat designed to bring helpful insects into London parks. The design just won the City of London's "Beyond the Hive" competition, an architecture contest aimed at creating an aesthetically pleasing and functional place for London's six-legged inhabitants to make their homes.

The design itself evokes nature (we understand that it mimics the ribbed structure of a dragonfly's wings), and is compartmentalized so various habitats can be cultivated within the structure. For instance, stag beetles need ground level entry and rotted logs to eat and grow larvae, while butterflies and moths need more vertical habitats (as well as vertical entries) located higher up. Each compartment can be stuffed with different kinds of natural waste or detritus so the insects have somewhere to nest, eat, and reproduce.

And may PopSci briefly step outside the utilitarian bounds of its usual purview of flying cars and quantum particles and point out that, while wholly functional, ARUP's bug hotel is very aesthetically pleasing as well? Without being overbearing, ARUP's design should fit pleasantly into any green space without becoming some kind of backyard centerpiece. Which is good news for you, because they are for sale direct from ARUP.

The Hotel in its Natural Habitat: ARUP

[Core77, British Land]

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5 Comments

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kormiko

07/13/10 at 4:34 pm

To a spider, that's like an all-you-can-eat buffet in a Vegas hotel.

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LuminousSpark

07/14/10 at 3:04 pm

this is awesome! and i would not mind having one in the back corner of my yard

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Fummfur

07/14/10 at 3:20 pm

I know a couple of people that would buy this just to lure bugs in they don't want so they could spray it down with insecticide once a month.

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muchado

07/15/10 at 9:22 pm

Thanks for the interesting article.

Just some clarification on one of your background pieces of information - Arup (which should not be upper case since it is named for Ove Arup, the founder) is primarily an engineering design consultancy (Sydney Opera House, Lloyds of London, the now stable Millennium Bridge, CCTV, Beijing Olympic Stadium etc). The architecture of CCTV was done by Rem Koolhaas of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Arup did the primary engineering design - making sure that it stays up, even in earthquakes, designing the heating, ventilation and plumbing and making it safe for fire. The design was then taken to construction by a local design institute in Beijing.

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rodir

08/21/10 at 7:23 pm

A hotel for bugs that's a hillarious idea. http://www.hotel-bucuresti.com/hoteluri/hotel_nelisse-117.html

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