project: Birdhouse
location: Indianapolis
involvement: full, student work
date: 2003 September

The Dendroica petechia is a diminutive species, approximately four inches in length, of the Aves class. The bird is distinguished by its deep yellow plumage and slender brown streaks along its sides. Typically it situates in overgrown pastures, woodland edges, swampy borders, or pond, bog, and stream sides. The male will pursue a selected female for as many as three days. Once eggs have been produced, the female will do all the incubating and the male will contribute provisions. The y.warbler is also victimized by the predatory cowbird, which will lay eggs in the warbler’s nest. Upon finding cowbird eggs, the y.warbler will simply build a supplementary layer in the nest over the impending progeny. The design process begins with recognizing an association linking a bird’s natural habitat and its container. The source was a supple, sinuous structure enveloping the energetic nature of the y.warbler and its tendency to nest adjacent to water. Furthermore, the structure must reflect the bird’s natural building patterns, unlike existing standards in birdhouse design. The introduction of a rigid, squared structure into the bird’s environment causes a similar reaction as the cowbird eggs. A novel layer is shaped into a removed portion of the archetypal birdhouse generating an adjusted container. Rigidity is derived from cedar, a biological material, while flow is developed from synthetic materials: aluminum tubing, plastic burlap, and thread (all building resources employed are innately resistant to water damage).