Pollinator

the birds and the bees (and bats and butterflies…) 

In collaboration with the City of Vancouver’s “CityStudio” and the UBC SEEDS Sustainability Program, students from UBC SALA were invited to design and prototype shelters for some of the city’s smallest yet most essential residents: pollinators. The project focused on bees, butterflies, wasps, and even bats, species critical to ecological health but increasingly threatened by urbanization.

The shelters were deployed at two pilot sites: a Pollinator Pop-up Park in Vancouver’s Fairview neighborhood (5th and Pine) and the UBC CIRS Building rooftop. The project began as part of an advanced design media course but quickly outgrew its academic bounds. Students explored material strategies, spatial needs, and species-specific behaviors. After review, six standout proposals were selected and hybridized into a final set of pollinator houses.

These structures are more than shelters, they’re micro-habitats. Designed using recycled plastic, scavenged wood, fabric, and pulp made from shredded paper and food-based binders, each house offers a combination of surfaces suitable for planting and protected nesting zones. The pulp matrix, designed for burrowing, demonstrates how material science and ecological design can intersect at the scale of insects.

Students also developed signage, infographics, and other public-facing elements to support education and engagement around urban biodiversity.

The result is both speculative and tangible: a model for how design education, civic partnership, and environmental stewardship can come together to support non-human urban life.

CONTRIBUTORS: SALA HiLo Team: Sébastien Roy, Stuart Lodge, Joshua Potvin, Blair Satterfield
Special thanks to UBC SEEDS, City of Vancouver Parks Department, & CityStudio Vancouver

Fig 1: The Pop-Up Pollinator Park at 5th and Pine is planted with a variety of plants that attract pollinators. The space provides a refuge for urban dwellers of all sizes.

Fig 2: A cementitious Bat House located near the parapet of a neighboring building provides shelter in layers. This allows the flying mammals to regulate their body temperatures as they take advantage of being located on a large thermal mass.

Fig 3: Student RA’s work to install information graphics at the 5th and Pine Pop-up Park.

Fig 4: A freestanding pollinator house is installed and prepped for planting.

Fig 5: Sébastien Roy and Stuart Lodge install a paper-pulp pollinator house at the 5th and Pine Pop-Up Park.