Bird Feeder

Intro

One slow afternoon, architects decided to flex their design muscles. “What if we make an over-the-top birdfeeder?” Immediately, bored professionals sprung to action. Sketches were developed, crits were held, and designs were selected.

However, the tides of industry turned, and the slow afternoons turned into deadline hell, stretching deep into the night. The bird feeder design challenge was abandoned in favor of something that actually made the firm money.

Since I was on render duty and these were the times of V-Ray and 2+ hours per image, I had spare time to push my design to prototype and eventually to the final version.

Prototype.

Final

 

Ideas

The initial concepts centered on objects capable of flight that look naturally suspended in the air: leaves, kites, and feathers. This gave me a rich library of shapes to explore. After a few crits, I decided that a feather would be the best option, as it has a direct link to birds. I chose a 1/4” acrylic as a material to take advantage of the seed color and pattern that, I hoped, would resemble a feather.

 

Assembly

The prototype had six isolated seed compartments. The idea was to use the voids created by depleting seeds as another layer of pattern. To reload the feeder, I had to take it down and remove the top panel, which was inconvenient. The side perches turned out to be a bit awkward for the birds as they struggled to insert their head into the feeding hole. Using scrap I found in the laser cutter room, I retrofitted parallel perches to see if they would work better (that’s why they look so rough in the photo), and the birds like them more.

The final design had one big compartment loaded from the hole on the top. I no longer had to take down and disassemble the birdfeeder every time it got depleted. The perches were made from 1/4” soft aluminum wire that was bent, inserted into holes, and held without glue, creating a comfortable perch.

The final version became a feeding machine. The birds ate through it twice a day. At its peak, over forty birds were present at the same time: sparrows, woodpeckers, and cardinals. The competition for the feeding holes was fierce, and the seeds shaken out of the feeder were picked off by four squirrels on the ground.

Such extensive habitat wrecked the cars around the office with an unreasonable amount of droppings. On the days when I was unable to reload the feeder, the squirrels took out their frustrations by eating the bike seats.

Therefore, it was decided to send this birdfeeder to my parent’s summer house, where it remains to this day.