Temperaturas Extremas incorporates bird nests into tree-like Luxembourg water tower
This elevated water tower by Spanish studio Temperaturas Extremas is designed to camouflage with trees in a forest in Luxembourg and provide shelter for nesting birds and bats.
The Bird and Mammal Shelter and Water Reservoir is located in a protected forest for the municipal water company in the growing district of Kirchberg, a vast plateau northeast of Luxembourg City.
It can hold 1,000 cubic metres of water and is designed by Temperaturas Extremas to also provide shelter for swallows, bat roosts and even peregrine falcons at its highest point 50 metres off the ground.
The site is located in a nature reserve called Natura 2000, a European ecological network of zones dedicated to biodiversity conservation.
To reduce the reinforced concrete tower's impact on this setting, the Madrid-based studio split it into two separate volumes, each with a cylindrical tank that is raised off the forest floor.
The tanks – one of which holds 600 cubic metres of water and the other 400 cubic metres – sit at different levels to reduce the tower's visual mass and help the industrial structure blend into surrounding trees.
"The primary challenge was integrating this water infrastructure into a natural environment, such as a forest," said Temperaturas Extremas co-founder Andrés Cánovas.
"This required careful attention to the fragmentation of the volumes and the textures of the materials, ensuring that the large structure blended harmoniously with its surroundings."
According to Temperaturas Extremas, the tower's form draws on an external elevator with cylindrical elements from one of the studio's previous projects in Cartagena, Spain.
Meanwhile, the towers of churches in the Italian city Ravenna and buildings by the architect Mario Ridolfi were also key design influences.
One of the volumes has a rough concrete skin and is home to a number of nesting spots for swallows at different heights.
The second tower is coated in untreated cork, which acts as a thermal insulation layer against the water tank, screened with a permeable facade of untreated larch wood slats.
Pre-fitted with bat roosts, this wooden skin will eventually be covered with vegetation, "becoming just another tree on the site", the studio said.
At ground level, the Bird and Mammal Shelter and Water Reservoir's ground floor has a metal facade to deter intruders while its surrounding paving is made of rammed earth.
The structure also includes rainwater collection systems, an observation deck at its peak and a network of walkways intended for maintenance and monitoring of the nesting areas.
Temperaturas Extremas won a competition for the water tower project in 2016 held by the Kirchberg Fund on behalf of the City of Luxembourg.
"The original competition brief included the integration of the project into the natural environment," said studio co-founder Nicolás Maruri. "As a result, the development process involved working closely with ornithologists and naturalists to define the bird and mammal nesting areas."
The Bird and Mammal Shelter and Water Reservoir is one of several architecturally significant water towers in Luxembourg. Other examples include the water cone tank at Hivange designed by Reuter Architects and the 68 metre-high water tower at Ban de Gasperich wrapped in LED lights by Jim Clemes Associates.
Other water towers on Dezeen include a funnel-shaped reservoir in Chile by Mathias Klotz and a wave-like concrete structure in Sweden by White Arkitekter.
The photography is by Miguel Fernández-Galiano.
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