Biotope is a project that explores how architecture can embrace organic life that can grow and exist into the harsh urban reality.
Is a result of a collaboration between Simon Hjermind Jensen and civil engineer Vimer Jensen, artist Morten Plesner, reptile and terrarium expert Thomas Bentsen and architecture student Lorenz Sedlmay. The idea is to create an environment that can support a self sustainable greenhouse for plants and bees.
The exterior shape is inspired by the form of a shell and is made by thick polycarbonate which acts as protector from the exterior. The bowl placed inside collects rainwater which then leads into the soil through small holes in the shell. The plastic bowl and the concrete shell become in this way a self-watering green house. Sixty different seed have been sown into the soil.
Later as plants the majority of these seeds will attract insects. On the inside of the shell a beehive is attached. The bees directly access to both the outside and inside. The structure is projected to stay there for three years without any maintenance or interference.
The experiment of mimicking a macro living organism that hosts micro organic life wants to move people on perceiving and relating with more empathy towards the place they inhabit envisioning a future of biological structures that live through their architectural construction.
All images: Simon Hjermind Jensen
