As a young girl growing up in suburban Los Angeles, Joyce Hwang loved seeing how urban animals would create little moments of disorder in the highly manicured landscape. Now the intersection between animals and the built environment is at the very heart of her work as a professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo and as director of the ecologically focused practice Ants of the Prairie. Hwang’s projects, from bat towers to bee elevators to multispecies installations, have been on display throughout the world and have won multiple awards. In this episode, she talks to host David Hill about incorporating animals into our constructed spaces—what it entails, why it’s critical (for us as well as them), and what everyday people can do to make their homes and yards more accommodating to our non-human friends.
Credits:

Host: David Hill
Guest: Joyce Hwang
Writer/Producer: Laura Silverman
Production and editing by UB Video Production Group

Coming Oct. 7: An act of sorcery at a school table tennis match in Nigeria led Phillips Stevens to a 50-year anthropology career that dove deep into magic and witchcraft. Next time on Driven to Discover, Stevens talks with host Tom Dinki about why belief in the supernatural persists in the modern world, and how it may ultimately be what makes us human.