Tree House + 78-Room Bird Nest
Posting a birdhouse in the backyard is a great way to attract feathered friends, but some of the greatest fun tends to remain hidden from view behind wooden walls.
This project by Nendo in Japan for a regional nature center provides small spaces for flying creatures but a larger viewing area for visitors as well.
One-way peepholes facilitate peaks into the nesting habits of the resident birds who enter smaller openings from the other side.
Aptly, the human entry side is shaped much like a traditional birdhouse but scaled up for people who can climb in via a ladder and circular opening.
“A treehouse designed for the Ando Momofuku Center, a facility devoted to promoting and increasing access to nature activities. The facility is located in a forest in Komoro City in Japan’s mountainous Nagano Prefecture. Our treehouse is collective housing for many birds and one person. On one side, the treehouse has entrances to 78 nest spaces for birds. The other side has an entrance for one person, who can look into the birds’ nests from inside the treehouse.”
Here’s how Nendo describes their approach:
“Giving people a small ! moment. There are so many small ! moments hidden in our everyday. But we don’t recognize them. And even when we do recognize them, we tend to unconsciously reset our minds and forget what we’ve seen. But we believe these small ! moments are what make our days so interesting, so rich.”
“That’s why we want to reconstitute the everyday by collecting and
reshaping them into something that’s easy to understand. We’d like the people who’ve encountered nendo’s designs to feel these
small ! moments intuitively. That’s nendo’s job.”
As you can see, Nendo has a pretty unique design vision, and they consistently produce cool and amazing stuff ranging from small design objects to entire buildings. Some previous standouts we’ve featured include living moss wallpaper, double-duty dog accessories and an “invisible chair.”
