Matthew Ruiter
Matthew Ruiter is a thesis student in the LTU M>Arch program. A long-time interest in the interactions between architecture and ecology has culminated in a thesis project investigating ways to healthily address urban wildlife, looking at bats in the city of Detroit and how they can beneficially interact with urban human residents.
TITLE 
Urban Nightlife: How Architecture Can Build Cooperation Between Bats and Humans
MajorArchitecture [M.Arch]
DescriptionWildlife has long inhabited architecture and shows no signs of leaving, especially as cities continue to grow and rural habitat becomes smaller and more disconnected. This frequently brings wild animals and humans into conflict, and most human attempts to remedy these conflicts do nothing to address the actual problem: by giving animals nowhere else to go, we force them to adapt to human structures. Architects have the unique ability to address this problem, by considering the built spaces wildlife species are likely to inhabit and design ways to allow humans and wildlife to benefit from the built environment without negatively affecting each other’s health and welfare.
Urban Nightlife: How Architecture can Build Cooperation Between Bats and Humans zooms in on bats, vital keystone species ecologically that are nonetheless feared and misunderstood by many humans, and looks at how architectural interventions at an abandoned site in Detroit can be used as a case-study to design a form where humans and bats can live in harmony, each benefitting from the other while avoiding conflict. Bats already make their homes in Detroit, and, as their natural habitat continues to shrink and populations, including several endangered species, decline, designers have an incredible opportunity to help conserve these ecologically critical mammals and allow humans to learn about and reap the benefits of bats living within the built environment.