Called Tjirp, the bird's slim rear is decorated with a narrow cut and slides under a door to wedge it open.

The doorstop is handmade from oak by the designer and comes with a white, black or natural head.

Cas Moor is based in Ghent where he is currently studying multimedia design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Other bird-related design we've featured includes a bird box inside a flowerpot, a light that looks like birds sitting on a wire and a huge woodland nesting box for birds and humans.

We've also featured a wooden doorstop that doubles as a toy car - see all homeware on Dezeen.

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Erected amongst a desolate group of disused grain silos beside the Buffalo River, the seven-metre tower provides a new hive for honey bees that had formally formerly taken up residence in the boarded-up window of an old office block.

The tower is clad with a honeycomb of hexagonal steel panels. Triangular perforations speckle the surfaces, allowing light to filter gently inside.

The bees are housed in a hexagonal wooden box suspended near the top of the tower. The base of the box is glazed so visitors can enter the tower and look up into the hive.

The box is also attached to a system of pulleys so that beekeepers can bring it safely down to ground for maintenance tasks. University at Buffalo students Courtney Creenan, Kyle Mastalinski, Daniel Nead, Lisa Stern and Scott Selin named the project Elevator B, as a reference to this mechanism.

The tower represents the winning entry of the university's Hive City competition, which asked students to design a habitat for the bees. Other entries included a wooden cube and a geodesic dome.

Other stories on Dezeen relating to bees include conceptual proposals for artificial bees and a series of honeycomb vases constructed by bees. See more stories about insects on Dezeen.

Here's a statement from the design team:

Elevator B

Elevator B is an urban habitat for a colony of honeybees, which originally occupied a boarded window in an abandoned office building in Buffalo, NY. Although not created for a specific client organization per se, the project has generated a great deal of public curiosity because of the combination of the colony of honeybees, an interesting and until very recently, a restricted-access site, and a well-designed object. The site, Silo City, is a group of largely abandoned grain elevators and silos on the Buffalo River. Elevator B is intended as a symbol of the site's environmental and economic regeneration.

The 22' tall tower is a honeycombed steel structure designed and built utilizing standard steel angle and tube sections. It is sheathed in perforated stainless steel panels that were parametrically designed to protect the hive and it's visitors from the wind, and allow for both solar gain in the winter and shading in the summer. The bees are housed in a hexagonal cypress box with a laminated glass bottom through which the bees can be observed.

This "beecab" provides protection, warmth and separates entry access between bees and humans. Visitors are able to enter the tower, stand below the cypress beecab and look up to view the colony of bees behind glass, similar to an ant farm, as they build their hive. Beekeepers gain access to the hive by lowering it, allowing them to ensure the health and safety of the bees. This feature also caters to the school groups that visit the site, encouraging children to get a close up view.

Visitors to the site have ranged from school groups discussing the natural ecosystems of Western New York and the Great Lakes, to adult photography classes using Elevator B and the site as a subject. A nearby nature preserve has also led several field trips to the project and is in the process of developing a formal education program centered on the bees and on colony collapse disorder, which threatens the species. Interpretive signage about honeybees and the site is currently under development and will be part of the larger redevelopment plan for Silo City.

The questions asked by visitors range from the simple to the complex, but they would never have been asked in the first place if the visitor did not have the access to bees that is fostered by Elevator B. This is a clear demonstration that architecture can and does do more than serve aesthetic or structural purposes. In Elevator B's example, it sparks children to learn and adults to reconsider what they thought they knew. This includes the designers themselves, who have not only designed for the needs of their clients but have become inspired to become advocates for them as well.

Location: Silo City in Buffalo NY
Firm Name: Hive City
Team: Courtney Creenan, Kyle Mastalinski, Daniel Nead, Lisa Stern, Scott Selin
Project Sponsors: University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning, Rigidized Metals Corporation

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News: Hackney studio Sample and Hold 3D-scanned a living horse for a new sculpture by Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger.

Unveiled this week on The Mall in London, The White Horse is a scaled-down version of a 50-metre-high sculpture Wallinger eventually hopes to build in Ebbsfleet, Kent.

Technicians at Sample and Hold helped create the sculpture by using a white light scanner to produce a 3D image of a racehorse named Riviera Red.

By projecting a grid of white light onto the horse's body and recording the resulting distortions, the technicians built up a three-dimensional map of the animal's shape. The 3D image was then used to make a mould to cast the sculpture from a mixture of marble dust and resin.

The horse was unveiled this week outside the headquarters of the British Council, the cultural institution that commissioned the artwork, where it will remain for two years before going on an international tour.

Wallinger hopes the life-size sculpture will re-ignite interest in his larger project in Ebbsfleet, which was commissioned in 2009 but stalled when the UK went into recession. The costs of the project are believed to be between £12 million and £15 million.

Like 3D printing, 3D scanning is becoming increasingly accessible and affordable – earlier this week we reported on a prototype for a desktop scanner that would allow users to digitally scan objects they want to replicate with a 3D printer at home.

Photographs are by Frank Noon for the British Council.

Here's some more information from the British Council:

‘The White Horse’, a new sculpture by Mark Wallinger, was unveiled outside the British Council’s London headquarters on the Mall today. Made of marble and resin, the sculpture is a life-size representation of a thoroughbred racehorse created using state of the art technology in which a live horse has been scanned using a white light scanner in order to produce a faithfully accurate representation of the animal standing on a broad plinth of Portland stone and facing down The Mall.

Commissioned by the British Council Collection, this major work will stand on The Mall for two years before becoming available for international display.

In 2008, Mark Wallinger won The Ebbsfleet Landmark Project, an international competition to build a monument at Ebbsfleet in Kent. Wallinger’s winning entry, a white horse, 25 times life-size, and standing some 50 metres tall, was designed to look out over what was once Watling Street. The White Horse in Spring Gardens is a life-sized version of this sculpture.

The White Horse illustrates Wallinger’s continuing fascination with the horse, and its emblematic status in our national history. The origins of the white horse as the emblem of Kent can be traced from 'Horsa' - the derivation of the modern word horse - a semi-mythological Anglo-Saxon leader who landed near Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet in the 6th century. The White Horse sculpture relates to the ancient history of hillside depictions of white horses in England but the pose is familiar from current depictions of thoroughbred stallions and has been replicated throughout the history of art from Stubbs’ painting of Eclipse to Wallinger’s own paintings of stallions from the Darley Stud.

The Thoroughbred was first developed at the beginning of the 18th century in England, when native mares were crossbred with imported Arabian stallions. Every racehorse in the world is descended from these animals. 90% from the Darley Arabian, the most dominant influence on the breed.

The proximity of the equestrian statues of Charles I and George IV on Trafalgar Square, and the Piazza’s location only a stone's throw from Horse Guards Parade, make the siting of this sculpture particularly resonant. As does the fact that The Mall remains a processional route of cavalry parades.

Andrea Rose, Director Visual Arts, British Council, said: “A white horse in the centre of London is a wonderful sight. It sparks associations - ancient and modern; war and peace; rural and urban; sport and pleasure. I hope it puts a spring in the step of all who pass it on the Mall.”

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The Petting Zoo app was launched at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town last week and features a menagerie of 21 interactive animal characters.

Users can swipe or tap the creatures to see how they react: push the rabbit and it stretches towards the edges of the screen or strike the teeth of a crocodile to play a tune.

Niemann describes the app as an "interactive picture book" and there are no words because "animals don't speak English".

It includes thousands of hand-drawn animation frames plus music and sound design by South African electronic musician Markus Wormstorm.

Christoph Niemann's work has appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Newsweek and Wired, and his work for The Times Magazine is archived on his Abstract Sunday blog. After eleven years in New York he now lives in Berlin.

Dezeen were in Cape Town for the first leg of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour, where Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo took us on a tour of his hometown and explained why Africa today is a place of "renewal, regeneration and growth". Look out for more movie reports from Cape Town in the coming days.

Petting Zoo is available at the iTunes store and is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Credits

Concept and animations: Christoph Niemann
Developer: Jon Huang
Music and Sound Design: Markus Wormstorm
Executive Producer: Design Indaba

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The larger-than-life statue appears to act as a supporting column, as its body pushes up through a cantilevered upper storey so that only legs, a long neck and a head can be spotted by passers-by.

"The idea is to animate the urban landscape by using a child's imagination," explains Hondelatte Laporte Architectes.

The aptly named Giraffe Childcare Centre accommodates a 60-bed childcare facility and a nursery for up to 20 children, in addition to playgrounds on each of its three levels.

As well as the giraffe, the playgrounds feature a white bear and a parade of huge ladybirds, all constructed from concrete. "Through their affable form, the lively animal sculptures invite us to live our dreams," say the architects.

The centre is located beside Jean Nouvel's Horizons offices, in the riverside Boulogne-Billancourt district in the south-west of the city.

The entrance is positioned at the end of the building so that visitors have to walk through the giraffe's legs on their way inside.

The architects used corrugated metal cladding for the whole exterior, creating a series of bright white elevations.

Animal sculptures are a recurring feature in designs for children and we've previously featured a restaurant with a model elephant inside.

Giraffe fans may also enjoy a house with a front door tall enough to let one of the animals, or the giraffe enclosure at Rotterdam Zoo.

Photography is by Philippe Ruault.

Here's some project details from the architects:

The Giraffe childcare centre is located in the C1 block of the Seguin Rives de Seine district in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburban area of Paris. The program houses a 60 bed childcare centre and 20 bed day nursery. The building has been awarded the green "zéro Energie Effinergie" label. This public building is located next to Jean Nouvel's "Horizons" tower, at the junction between the "Vieux pont de Sèvres" neighbourhood, built in the 70s, and the new area called "le Trapèze". The high density of this area gives it a rugged skyline. To be integrated into this particular urban landscape, the building is composed of three tiers. Each of the south-facing playgrounds is in continuity with the interior spaces and is identified by a unique concrete animal sculpture. Viewed from the surrounding towers, the regular sequence of terraces offers a real "fifth facade" to the neighbourhood.

The facades of the building are made out of white corrugated iron that provides a minimal background to the wild animal sculptures. The idea is to animate the urban landscape by using a child's imagination. The wild animals appropriate the space; a giraffe appears to be peacefully eating the leaves of the trees from the neighbouring park, a polar bear tries to clamber up the steps, while a family of ladybirds climbs the façade in an attempt to reach the interior patio.

Architecture turns into storytelling. The building changes its identity and becomes a landscape in its own right, a metaphor for the urban jungle. The animals and the trees link the building to nature and motion. The giraffe has become a banner for the nursery since it is visible in the surrounding area from all angles. We walk through its legs to enter the building. Through their affable form, the lively animal sculptures invite us to live our dreams. These playful and dreamlike sculptures introduce a little bit of fantasy into the routine life of the town in order to inspire our lives with a bit of poetry.

Project name: Giraffe childcare centre
Architect(s): Hondelatte Laporte Architectes
Project manager: Virginie Davo
Project team: Charlotte Fagart (architect)
Engineering: Studetech
HEQ Engineering: GCB Gestion Conseil Bâtiment

Client: SAEM Val de Seine Aménagement
Program: 60 bed childcare centre and 20 bed day nursery.
Lieu/Location: Boulogne-Billancourt (92) - France
Competition: January 2009
Delivery: 2012
Area: 1450 sq m
Cost: 3 744 000€ HT
Construction companies): SPIE SCGPM (general contractor), AAB (animals sculpture)

Above: site plan - click above for larger image

Above: ground floor plan - click above for larger image

Above: first floor plan - click above for larger image

Above: second floor plan - click above for larger image

Above: roof  plan - click above for larger image

Above: side elevation - click above for larger image

Above: front elevation - click above for larger image

Above: side elevation - click above for larger image

Above: rear elevation - click above for larger image

Above: long sectional elevation - click above for larger image

Above: cross sectional elevation - click above for larger image

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