Strung between a cluster of trees in a quiet nature reserve in Buffalo, New York, is a collection of large, metal pods. For now, they are quiet day and night, but the pods' architect, Joyce Hwang, hopes that in future twilights, they will be buzzing with the comings and goings of bats.
The network of pods was designed by Hwang, an assistant professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, to be a bat habitat. She wanted the project to be striking as well as useful, to entice people to ask questions about bats. "Bats are very beneficial and helpful animals," says Hwang. "But we typically see them in things like horror movies, so they tend to have a bad rap."
The group of pods is called the "Bat Cloud," and it's Hwang's second experiment in urban bat habitat, the first being a "Bat Tower" installed in 2010 at the ...
