Fragmentation is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity in the UK. With 70% of landscapes shaped by agriculture hedgerows were once a safe passageway through these machine-shaped habitats. But with demands for higher productivity and bigger machines the once omnipresent hedgerows have disappeared; leaving behind scattered ecosystems and no safe corridors to get from one to the other.
Based on the background of hedgerow loss and mismanagement this concept provides a structural intervention to act as a refuge, habitat, and safe passage for a more-than-human target group. This temporal bridge for the ecosystem actor has taken the shape of an artificial hedge element that over time grows back into a functioning hedge habitat.
The 3D structure out of demonstrable matter will incorporate seeds slowly decaying while the plants push through. Reconnecting and linking former fragmented areas back together and providing a corridor and nesting and hiding grounds for many species like dormice, hedgehogs, and birds.
Through this temporal bridge, we want to give these species a refuge until the actual hedgerow has grown back. It acts as a spatial and temporal placeholder and an impermanent prosthetic for a shattered and fragmented ecosystem.
Fendge was developed as part of the Designing Temporal Ecologies project with Maike Gebker, Larissa Pschetz, and Michelle Bastian in collaboration with Ally Phillimore’s Evolutionary Ecology group at the University of Edinburgh.
