It is very useful to take a week to consider a single idea. The current workshop at the studio,  Habitats and Architecture fits with many other things that I have been interested in, following a progression of ideas about structure, biomimicry and what we build as humans.  I am most interested in the activities of building, how the houses, nests, dens boroughs come together.  The animals and insects build by instinct, with finesse, coordination and great engineering.  Do we also have instincts for building, templates for what is required.  In the studio, we are imitating the animals   

Day one, nests coming together with strands and grasses bit by bit in layers. textures change as the structure is assembled. It changes from the outside shell to the downy center where the babies live. Birds live in apartment buildings. From the studio we see some new configuration of nests.

Day two:  what do the wasps do?

They chew up cellulous into paper and then they spit and build pinch by pinch in layers.  The wasps have certainly been imitated.  WASP Corperation  is imitating their namesake by prototyping a 3-d printing machine  that is for building houses.  Stone Spray Research Project  is also 3-d printing by making plans to build bridges from sand and spit (binder). In a simplier format, houses are being build of layers of tubular bags filled with dirt.    We used Celluclay, which is paper mache combined with plaster.  

We moved onto the work of beavers and a strange kid mixology of materials and ideas. Tomorrow is all about Spiders.  I will keep you posted.