When designing spaces for people to live in, what if we reframed the central question, from "How many people are going to live here?" to "How many species are going to live here?"
In nature, habitats are never single-purpose or single-species They are multifunctional, mutually supportive systems. Yet in human society, we rarely consider the needs of other species when designing our buildings and urban environments.
How might we help inhabitants of the Astino notice and adapt to the presence of birds as co-inhabitants of their space?
We looked to nature for answers studying how species coevolve and cooperate across boundaries. We drew inspiration from two sources: ecotones which are the border zones where ecological systems meet and mingle to form new communities, and foxes, which subtly shift their behaviour in order to thrive alongside humans in urban spaces.
From these principles, we developed The In-Between, a bird-perspective camera system that makes co-inhabitation visible and actionable. Through it, you experience your surroundings as birds do: what they see, what they hear. This shift in perspective reveals how radically different their experience of shared space is from our own. By making that difference felt, The In - Between cultivates empathy toward the species around us and invites us to ask how small changes in our daily lives might make room for us to truly cohabit with them.
