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Associate Professor of Architecture
University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning
Animal architecture; habitecture; habitart; wildlife habitats, ecology and architecture
Joyce Hwang is an architect who specializes in animal architecture — also known as “habitecture” — which explores the integration of wildlife habitats into constructed environments.
Hwang’s projects include “Life Support,” a living habitat/art project in the capital of Australia that incorporates a 400-year-old tree and serves as a functional home for bats, birds and reptiles.
“Bat Cloud” is a hanging canopy of vessels designed and constructed to support bat habitation in a nature preserve in Buffalo, New York. Comparable to a vertical cave, Hwang’s “Bat Tower” provides a habitat for these often-misunderstood mammals at a sculpture park in Western New York.
As cities and human populations grow, Hwang’s work calls attention to pressing questions about the destruction of habitats that support animals, plants and other organisms. In addition to her faculty role, she is a registered architect who serves as director of the practice Ants of the Prairie.
Joyce Hwang
Associate Professor of Architecture
University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning