The Circadian Centre for Climate Literacy
Some Kind of Nature is the Biodiversity and Climate Crisis Response Atelier, meaning we must both decentralise humans to design for nature and also tackle the very man-made issue of the climate crisis. I effectively split these ideas into two buildings with symbiotic but separate functions. The Night Centre is concerned with protest and debate, whilst the Day Centre is to conserve and educate.
Responding to the needs of the local community and wildlife and inspired by the diurnal and nocturnal cycles of animals, I developed the scheme into a Day Centre to act as a community hub and educational facility, and a Night Centre that was both a pub eatery and a base for local activist groups. The site that we were given was unloved and overgrown but full of potential, so a major part of my scheme was a landscaping strategy that regenerated the land and created a variety of habitats for different flora and fauna. This included roof spaces that became home to colonies of bats in the night centre and doves or other group nesting birds in the day centre.
Reflecting on what I’ve learned from being in the Some Kind of Nature Atelier, I have embraced being able to make climate and biodiversity the centre of my work and my main design driver. In the future I’d like to explore climate conscious architecture in greater detail, and discover more about my other architectural interests such as conservation, adaptive reuse and landscape architecture.
