Andu Masebo and Rio Kobayashi are amongst 23 designers who’ve created birdhouses for an exhibition held at South London Gallery that aimed to unpack “what it means to construct a home for a chook”.
Conceived by design studio Laptop Room and birdwatching collective Flock Collectively, the Dwellings mission centered on shared themes of sanctuary and exploring our relationship with nature.
The exhibition held within the Orozco Backyard and Clore Studio at South London Gallery from 31 August to 1 September 2024 comprised an eclectic sequence of twenty-two objects and pictures, starting from sensible options to expressive conceptual responses.
The numerous contributions encapsulated the distinctive thought processes and abilities of makers together with ceramicists, glassmakers, architects and photographers.
Lots of the designers created their very own takes on standard birdhouses, that are usually produced from wooden and have a gap simply huge sufficient to offer an entrance for the nesting birds.
Different contributors opted for a extra summary strategy, resembling artist and designer Moe Asari’s site-specific mission exploring the makes an attempt to reintroduce black kites to a Dutch nature reserve.
The present’s co-curator Masebo, who runs the Laptop Room design collective alongside Jesse Butterfield and Charlie Humble-Thomas, developed a birdhouse by way of a distant collaboration together with his uncle Dan O’Conell – a skilled carpenter primarily based in Eire.
With out conversing all through the method, Masebo and O’Connell despatched supplies forwards and backwards between London and Eire, every making their very own alterations till an object with the type of a birdhouse emerged.
Butterfield’s contribution to the exhibition is a wood construction knowledgeable by skyscrapers and modernist structure. Fowl Metropolis gives house for eight nesting home sparrow {couples} inside a tower carved into natural, tree-like kinds.
London and Copenhagen-based designer Daniel Schofield‘s birdhouse makes use of renewable cork bark as a substitute for wooden, which he recommended is an odd alternative of fabric because it requires reducing down a chook’s pure residence to create a man-made one.
“The shape and proportions had been chosen to be good for birds,” stated Schofield, “but in addition basic to supply industrially and regionally, hopefully giving extra likelihood of those being made en-masse, and giving the most effective alternative of creating extra houses for birds in our city panorama.”
Kobayashi’s playful response to the temporary known as The Visitor Home For An Ostrich is elevated to an acceptable peak so an ostrich may cover its head inside slightly than burying it within the floor.
The birdhouse options an aerodynamic kind and particulars that replicate the ostrich’s capacity to run at nice speeds. Its entrance floor is scorched to provide the impression that aerodynamic friction has set the wooden alight.
Ceramicist George Baggaley created a birdhouse in his signature natural type, which is embellished with glazes that intensify its undulating surfaces.
Ovulo by Jaclyn Pappalardo includes a welded kind harking back to shapes present in nature. The curved profile with a hook at one finish for suspending it from a tree department was produced utilizing a course of that entails inflating metallic utilizing water.
Oliver Hawkes labored with a charity known as World Era to construct birdhouses utilizing materials offcuts donated by eyewear model Cubitts. The mission aimed to have interaction juvenile individuals within the making course of and educate them about points regarding the setting and chook cohabitation.
Lots of the items created for the exhibition had been obtainable to buy, with all proceeds serving to to help South London Gallery’s communities and studying programmes.
