Design
Colorful, DIY Urban Neighborhoods ... for Birds
These makeshift shelters slap onto street poles with the help of magnets.
Urban birds have a rough time of it, what with a shortage of trees in which to roost and a diet that might consist of human-food scraps and the occasional cigarette butt.
Vancouver designers Jeffrey Liu and Andrew Siu think they deserve a better life than that. So starting at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they've constructed a line of cheap shelters for birds augmented with powerful magnets. By using said magnets to attach a bunch of them onto light poles, street signs, abandoned cars and the like, anybody can transform a lifeless city block into a refugee camp where birds can safely raise gaggles of shrieking chicks. (At least until some jerk pulls the houses off and takes them into his home.)