Wildlife flows is a project in progress based on the humans and animals coexistence in Guatemala City.
THE ANALYSIS
In order to get a complete vision of Guatemala City wildlife, four different animals have been taken as references, two birds and two ground animals: king volture and quetzal, black howler and ocelot. That kind of classification helped us to have a complete analysis of the territory, since the four species present different parameters for travelling/flying length, altitude of living areas and type of movement.
The project is concerned with the existing wildlife flows at urban level in Guatemala city. The objective was to map the locations and pathways of different wildlife and impact of existing infrastructure on them.
THE METHODOLOGY
The methodology adopted was divided in five main phases.
THE MAPS
We started from mapping the green areas in the chosen site of 25 km². Then we focused on wildlife’s maximum travel distance and flying altitude to map their flow patterns within the urban areas.
Result was four maps which showed the flow patterns of each chosen animals and areas within which their movement was restricted due to different reasons – lack of green areas, polluted ravines and human intervention being the primary causes.
Next map represents the proximity lines of the four animals.
Afterwards, we focused on a single sample: the black howler.
Before changing parameters of the green areas that will affect different paths, we zoomed in using the same resolution in order to get a comparison with more scales.
Again after coming back to the main scale, we spot the minimum path related to the green areas’ size.
Moreover, the versatility of the project’s application is evident as you can notice at the end of the video. The animal paths are heavily related to the green areas’ scale, from few small dots to huge natural clusters.
The aim of the next project’s step will be to identify the strategic locations where interventions can lead to co-existence of humans and wildlife within the urban areas, since Guatemala City is already highly characterized by a frequent presence of animal in the most urbanized parts of the town.
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Wildlife flows is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at Master in Advanced Architecture in 2019/2020 by:
Students: Francesco Polvi, Aditya Ambare, Chim Meng Lin, Dinesh Vellingiri
Faculty: Marco Poletto
Faculty Assistant: Marios Apostolos Mouzakopoulos