BirDs' LAND, An Innovative Public Spaces for Bird-Friendly Environment, won the AIIE 2022 Award.

Tuesday 1 November 2022

     Asst. Prof. Dr. Kieansak Saengkliang, Lecturer of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Thammasat University designs a pilot space for the coexistence between "human" and "bird" under the name of "BirDs' LAND, An Innovative Public Spaces for Bird-Friendly Environment", which is an innovative design work that has been recognized internationally by winning 3 awards in the international competition, Africa Invention & Innovation Expo 2022 (AIIE 2022) in Nigeria, Africa.

     Asst. Prof. Dr. Kieansak said that 'bird' is the most familiar animal to human. It is a symbol to the way of life of human beings, such as in the morning when the birds chirp, we would feel that the nature is fertile. This is a representative image of 'bird' towards human. However, at present, we can see that the urban society has exclusioned the beings like 'birds' through the destruction of their former habitat due to urbanization which affect the well-being of birds, therefore make the number of birds in the city to decline.

     This leads to the development of BirDs' LAND, an open space design project. It is a creation of environment where birds in nature can interact with people without interfering with each other's way of life. For example, birds can fly into BirDs' LAND which has multiple buildings, such as the bird watching observatory building or waterfront area. These areas had been designed for people to get as close as possible to birds. In these areas, we created innovations that enable birds to live in perfect environments without human dependence, like building food chains by drilling holes on coconut shells for insects to eat, then birds naturally come to eat the insects. The area is devoted as a perfect habitat for birds as well as for humans can also come to interact in this natural area.

     The design of BirDs' LAND is a built environment that has been attempted to be as natural as possible. The building material is therefore a semi-natural material that does not affect the life of the birds later, such as using soil to create a bird habitat using the technology of rammed earth, the use of bamboo to assemble a bird habitat, including the use of recycled materials to build buildings in BirDs' LAND. Currently, BirDs' LAND is being built in Rayong as a public area which has activities in relevant to both domesticated and wild birds.