12 x architecture, general intro:
biotope
The Biotope blog - by architect Tormod Amundsen and the Biotope team
21 January 2025
12x bird hides and nature shelters in Varanger by Biotope (with google map site links)
12 x architecture, general intro:
24 December 2021
The "Fold it paper birds" by Biotope
The Steller´s Eider, King Eider and Harlequin Duck paper ´fold-it´ birds have spread their wings far and wide! We have given away hundreds of sheets at birding / outdoors festivals, as well as selling them to people visiting us at our office. We have also sent them to people around the world who have asked us for them. Now we want to give them away for free - as digital high resolution jpg-files. In the blogpost text below you will find links to the 3 different species we have made. So, if you want a do-it-yourself-challenge: Print the preferred bird species, preferably in A2 width (but A3 works as well, or just combine two A3´s) and fold away! The Steller´s Eider is the easiest to make (still. a challenge though! See video below), while the King Eider and Harlequin are tricky and very tricky!
If you make a paper bird: feel free to share an image with us, through our social media! Thanks.
Also: After years of leaving this website / blog non-active we're thinking of bringing some blog updates back to life. Some things are worth sharing, perhaps not in a website form, but just a small snippets of info, photos, videos etc, every once in a while. For the past years we have mostly posted news and views on our social media plattforms, but it just might be time to bring the blog back to life...
Steller´s Eider
12 June 2019
Biotope archives
24 June 2018
Visiting Northwest Iceland - a June Biotope tour
Puffin close up at Drangey bird cliff
Needless to say we were very excited when the northwestern regions destination companies invited your truly and my two Biotope colleagues Monica and Raymond to visit the northwest this June! The aim of our trip was to explore new places for bird hides, nature shelters and to further collect material for a potential birding destination guide book. In other words: a dream job!
29 March 2018
Join the Biotope team
17 November 2017
Biotope philosophy & origin story - the AD interview
30 June 2017
Biotope online resources
Nature-based architecture projects and destination development.
As our projects diversify, both by countries and by themes, we wanted to give you an overview of some key onlince resources and places you can connect with us. This website is to a large extent a blog form history of our projects since 2011. More then 100 blogposts have been written, and should it be printed it would make a couple of books. While we keep posting longer form articles on this website, much of our content production have moved to social media, like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram during the past couple of years. We have also started producing weekly video blogs posted on both Facebook and Youtube.
06 May 2017
SNOW LEOPARDS - the Tibetan Plateau expedition
Snow Leopards are among the most rare and least seen mammals in the world. For nature enthusiasts it is probably the most desired mammal to see. Needless to say I was incredibly excited when I was invited by Terry Townshend of Birding Beijing to be a part of a Snow Leopard pilot tour to a newly discovered area for this amazing species. The vast Chinese Tibetan Plateau probably holds many undiscovered secrets, and among them is an area that seems to be heavily favoured by the Snow Leopards. This following brief blogpost is based on a 14 day visit in China, where 5 days was spent at an undisclosed location between 4000 and 5000 meters above sea level.
20 December 2016
On birdwatching and architecture
The world of birding is a bit of a paradox. Birdwatching or birding is a wildly popular hobby that attracts millions of people worldwide, while at the same time birdwatching is considered to be very niche and it is, despite its massive popularity, not well known by the general public. Birdwatching has long roots, and in some basic ways it can be considered a modern version of of the hunter-gatherer mentality we see reflected in other hobbies like hunting or fishing, which is no longer done for survival purposes but rather for recreational purposes. Birdwatching however have evolved beyond the hunter-gatherer mind set. Birdwatching is in fact an expression of the modern naturalist science based culture. The desire to understand nature in all of its complexity is a key to understanding birdwatching. Birdwatching is a natural progression from Charles Darwins evolution theory to modern day popular naturalist icons like David Attenborough. Birdwatching is in many ways science for the masses. It is, alongside astronomy, the largest knowledge and science based hobby in the world where the boundaries to its field is pushed forward by a large base of very keen enthusiasts rather than a small base of specialist professionals. Today birdwatching is a global culture with millions of birdwatchers contributing to an ever growing knowledge base of everything related to birds. The plattforms on which birdwatchers communicate are numerous. There are endless magazines, online forums, websites, organisations, companies, etc, catering to every need and want in the birdwatching community. What they all share is a deep passion for birds and nature, wether it is for hard core science purposes like research into bird species taxanomy or the pure artistic exploration of bird art and bird photography.