- Used Alec's technique with getting some of the materials wet and used Johns technique with crunching it up together to make a circular shape.
- My technique continues of knotting a bunch of pieces together at three points to keep the shape circular and to create a sturdy base.
- For materials i kept with dry Lilly grass but added string and then wet news paper for cushion. The straw did not work.
Shelby suggested that your project is about "trial and error." I agree with this, and would further characterize it as being about the design process, generally: iterations, many small (and some large) adjustments, as an idea is implemented, feedback comes in. Please review Ulrich's chapters on the design process, particularly exploration.
ReplyDeleteThe point of your project is not to build a better bird nest. The bird nests are only an opportunity to reflect on design, as we (humans) try to build one, learning from each other what works, what doesn't, adding materials, giving excuses about why we couldn't succeed, whining, etc.
I suggested reading pages in Rykwert's On Adam's House in Paradise because modern (20th century) architecture — at least some architects — needed to find a new, pure architecture, one in which mere decoration and unnecessary additions were not present. And so they imagined the first primitive hut, what that must have been. It was purely imagination. They may have looked at animals, too.
Please don't get overly caught up in bird nests. it's good you have them, and they'll be useful for a show, later on, but your project is not about birds nests. I think it is not even really about animal architecture: it is about design, by the human species (of animals), with some light shed by our experimentation with bird nests.
a logical next step for your project, in my view, would be to take our nests, and our reflections, and create a document about those, using those as raw materials, probably also incorporating drawings by you based on photographs of our nests. It would also incorporate ideas from Ulrich, as well as Lawson and maybe Jones (all having to do with the design process, and all being readings from Design Stories last semester).