The Project
"In Texas some bat lovers have excavated caves and built towers on their land to encourage bat settlement. I'm interested in initiating a project suitable for bats in London. A number of partners have joined me this year to launch an open competition to design a bat house to give a much-needed year-round habitat to bats in the Southwest London area. There is great pressure on bat numbers in London as buildings get redeveloped and home improvements leave little space for bats to live in. In this structure the bats are our client and we hope to be able to accommodate different species that have different housing needs, the raising of a family, hibernation etc."
Jeremy Deller and the Bat House Project Partners are pleased to invite you to join a collaborative initiative to imagine and design a home for bats in London.
The Project highlights the potential for architects, builders, home-owners and conservationists to work together to produce wildlife-friendly building design. It connects the worlds of art and ecology to encourage public engagement with ecology issues. The Project builds on the Mayor of London's policies to raise awareness of urban biodiversity and to support the survival of London’s ten bat species.
We’ve launched a Competition to select the final design for the Bat House, to be built at the WWT London Wetlands Centre in Barnes, in South West London. The competition will be open to artists, architects, the wider public, students and schoolchildren. It will be accompanied by a publication, an exhibition and a limited edition artwork by Jeremy Deller.
The Bat House will be a building of aesthetic and environmental excellence, built with sustainable materials, offering a home to bats and an educational visitor attraction for people.
As part of the design competition visitors to this website were able to take part in monthly Design Challenges, and were also contribute ideas, images and information about bats and buildings. These Resources remain now as an online information bank.
Photo: Bat Conservation Trust archive.