“Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.”
-Izaak Walton
Art in Public Spaces – Toronto Botanical Gardens, Permanent Collection
Freelance Design in Collaboration with Steven Culver
First place winning entry and Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Award of Excellence for a public art installation
The house for a wren, an audible and rambunctious species of songbird in an equivalently raucous and musical family, should provide a dwelling with which to aid in the proliferation of its song. The song of the house wren could easily be compared to the most clever syncopation in jazz but this would be an anthropomorphic mistake. It is uniquely a song of a songbird, relentless and eternal. It is the only song it knows or will ever know. As humans try to compose orchestral scores of the greatest emotional magnitude through trial and error, the house wren simply sings the song which has been passed from generation to generation ad infinitum: to the beginnings of its existence as a species. It is an ancient song.
At most - as humans - what we can do for the wren is to provide some insight as how we may aid in the continuation of the song. The House for the Future Chorus is designed to amplify the song of the house wren from the initial cheeps and chirps through to the moment it leaves the nest to join the choir. The house is formed with a tapered spherical chamber made of wood to comfortably house the nest and deepen the tone of the chick’s youthful prattle. The song propagates through the tapered portion of the chamber and amplifies along an old phonograph horn.
Photo Credit: Terence Tourangeau