Students in Spain bring the biodiversity of the tree canopy down to the ground.
By Zach Mortice
Designed and built by IAAC students, the observatory is sited to maximize exposure to different tree species. Image by Forest Lab for Observational Research and Analysis (FLORA) © IAAC.
In 2022, a group of 18 students at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) had the rare experience of designing and building their own school?s research facility. Rising 30 feet above a hillside site amid the dense forest canopy of Barcelona?s Collserola Natural Park, the Forest Lab for Observational Research and Analysis (FLORA) is a mass timber observation tower that will allow students to observe and catalog the park?s biodiversity, specifically the organisms that make their home in the forest canopy. The observatory?s rectilinearity is sculpted and smoothed by a mesh net, inviting colonization by plants to camouflage the tower. Image by IAAC © Adrià Goula.
Pablo Herraiz, one of the students in the IAAC?s Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities program, says he was amazed by how much of the ground-level ecosystem?especially insects?he recognized in the treetops. ?I?ve begun to believe that many of the species we assume are restricted to the ground in fact have just fallen from their habitat or are commuting back and forth,? he says. It was an example of ?a larger interdependency [among] the trees to the rest of the surrounding environment.?
Treetops as the M...