Fluctuating Flyways
The N.E.S.T project explores the role of architectural material culture in reviving dieing traditions of interspecies stewardship. The project focuses on the migratory flypath of the increasingly vulnerable house martins, proposing building ‘NESTs’ or ‘bird barometers’ at it’s stopover points, to provide spaces for deep listening to birdsong as an embodied practice of ecosystem monitoring. These self-built temples speculate on the (re)birth of a new distinct vernacular, to expand and connect birding communities, from Dorset UK, to Morocco to The Gambia.
The research explores reviving the practice of Islah—an Arabic term for peacemaking, or reform. This practice was a historically integral yet under-documented function of bird towers (Himas) within the Islamic world. As industrialized farming replace these interspecies avian towers, this project explores methods of their contemporary revival.
Birdsong becomes a shared language of ecosystem monitoring, a method of embodied ecosystem monitoring along a vulnerable migratory bird flyway.
Interior view of NEST translated to Kutu Creek in The Gambia
Exterior view of NEST translated to Kutu Creek in The Gambia
The Indus River Dolphin as a tool for community mobilisation and the expansion of the Government of Sindh Wildlife Department in Sukkur, Pakistan
The Indus River Dolphin as a tool for community mobilisation and the expansion of the Government of Sindh Wildlife Department in Sukkur, Pakistan
The Indus River Dolphin as a tool for community mobilisation and the expansion of the Government of Sindh Wildlife Department in Sukkur, Pakistan