This elevated water tower by Spanish studio Temperaturas Extremas is designed to camouflage with bushes in a forest in Luxembourg and supply shelter for nesting birds and bats.
The Hen and Mammal Shelter and Water Reservoir is situated in a protected forest for the municipal water firm within the rising district of Kirchberg, an enormous plateau northeast of Luxembourg Metropolis.
It might maintain 1,000 cubic metres of water and is designed by Temperaturas Extremas to additionally present shelter for swallows, bat roosts and even peregrine falcons at its highest level 50 metres off the bottom.

The location is situated in a nature reserve known as Natura 2000, a European ecological community of zones devoted to biodiversity conservation.
To cut back the bolstered concrete tower’s influence on this setting, the Madrid-based studio cut up it into two separate volumes, every with a cylindrical tank that’s raised off the forest ground.
The tanks – one in every of which holds 600 cubic metres of water and the opposite 400 cubic metres – sit at completely different ranges to scale back the tower’s visible mass and assist the economic construction mix into surrounding bushes.

“The first problem was integrating this water infrastructure right into a pure surroundings, comparable to a forest,” mentioned Temperaturas Extremas co-founder Andrés Cánovas.
“This required cautious consideration to the fragmentation of the volumes and the textures of the supplies, guaranteeing that the massive construction blended harmoniously with its environment.”

Based on Temperaturas Extremas, the tower’s type attracts on an exterior elevator with cylindrical components from one of many studio’s earlier initiatives in Cartagena, Spain.
In the meantime, the towers of church buildings within the Italian metropolis Ravenna and buildings by the architect Mario Ridolfi have been additionally key design influences.
One of many volumes has a tough concrete pores and skin and is residence to various nesting spots for swallows at completely different heights.
The second tower is coated in untreated cork, which acts as a thermal insulation layer in opposition to the water tank, screened with a permeable facade of untreated larch wooden slats.
Pre-fitted with bat roosts, this wood pores and skin will finally be lined with vegetation, “turning into simply one other tree on the location”, the studio mentioned.

At floor degree, the Hen and Mammal Shelter and Water Reservoir’s floor ground has a steel facade to discourage intruders whereas its surrounding paving is manufactured from rammed earth.
The construction additionally contains rainwater assortment techniques, an commentary deck at its peak and a community of walkways meant for upkeep and monitoring of the nesting areas.

Temperaturas Extremas received a contest for the water tower mission in 2016 held by the Kirchberg Fund on behalf of the Metropolis of Luxembourg.
“The unique competitors transient included the mixing of the mission into the pure surroundings,” mentioned studio co-founder Nicolás Maruri. “Consequently, the event course of concerned working carefully with ornithologists and naturalists to outline the chook and mammal nesting areas.”

The Hen and Mammal Shelter and Water Reservoir is one in every of a number of architecturally vital water towers in Luxembourg. Different examples embrace 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.
Different water towers on Dezeen embrace a funnel-shaped reservoir in Chile by Mathias Klotz and a wave-like concrete structure in Sweden by White Arkitekter.
The images is by Miguel Fernández-Galiano.