OUGD603 - Brief 7 - Build a home for Wildlife - Development - Sketches - Idea 1 - Bug Hotel

Idea 1 

- A bug hotel could be made using stackable geometric shapes
- The blocks could be made from either wood or concrete however concrete would create a more durable and long lasting design outside whilst also contrasting against the natural environment creating a contemporary design
- The geometric shapes would allows a potentially messy looking bug hotel to be organised in a structured way.
- Creating a series of stackable shapes means that people would be able to arrange them as they like within the garden to create a feature out of the bug boxes 
- The blocks would be bug homes to a range of insects and pollinators. Taking this idea of a home it was considered that the blocks could be the shapes of different features of a house. 

- Refining these elements down to simple shapes would create a contemporary and geometric aesthetic.
- Key architectural features of a house were picked out e.g. windows, dormas, arches, doors, roofs etc
- Different shapes were drawn to represent different aspects of a house e.g. a door was represented through a rectangle, a roof through a triangle, a window through a rectangle with partition lines.
- Using some of the shapes that represented outside characteristics of houses, these were considered as three dimensional blocks. 
- To create the bug houses their would need to be areas within the blocks that different natural materials could be put within e.g. bamboo sticks, rocks, bits of wood with drilled holes 
- It was considered that some of the other shapes could be applied to the sides of the 'house' shapes to create sunken areas where the materials could be placed 
- On a square 'house' block rectangle indentations could be laid out on different sides of the block in a similar way to a house to reflect doors and windows
- On the block that looks like an extension a square could be used on the face of it to reflect a garage door
- It was also considered that the divides within a window could act as a three dimensional form and act as partitions within an indented area 
- By adding sunken shapes to the blocks this would further the concept of the blocks being bug houses
- By making the lengths of the shapes the same this would mean the blocks could be stacked and arranged in different ways so that they can create different 'house' arrangements
- It was also considered that shapes could be sunken into the 'roofs' of some of the shapes. In these areas plants could be grown to act as a way of attracting insects to live within the bug houses in a similar way to Bug Bricks

- Potentially it was also considered that only one block could be used with each side having a different habitat feature on each side e.g. bamboo sticks for solitary bees, plants on the top, rock wall etc.