Bird Cage

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Bird Cage

Type

Industrial › Research Facility

YEAR

2001

I believe the third generation city will happen when the industrial city is ruined. In this work I wanted to ruin Tokyo (Bird Cage, Casagrande & Rintala, Yokohama Triennale 2001) imitating the ways how birds are spreading seeds. I wanted to attack Tokyo as a bird. The site is in Yokohama, the port section of the Tokyo Metropolis.The construction is quite simple. Inside is a cage made out of concrete reinforcing steel bars and outside is hemp rope, the same what they use in the Yokohama harbor.. We wound the rope around the steel cage and waited for the rain. When the rain came the natural rope became wet and when it dried again it shrunk and became very tense and structural with the steel. The shape of the Bird Cage is imitating the skyscraper on the background indicating the direction where we wanted to go.The structure works as a silo for launching birds. The birds are made out of balsa wood and constructed as gliders. Inside every bird is a test tube inside of which is a message saying that who ever finds the bird is asked to put the seed inside the tube to ground and take responsibility of the vegetation. Each tube has 5 seeds of basic Japanese vegetables: soya, rice, soba etc. There is also a contact address for us to inform, where the bird was found.Every day during the 72 days of the Yokohama Triennial a bird would get attached to a Vaisala meteorological balloon and sent off from the Bird Cage. The balloon would take the bird up to 10 kilometres where the helium inside the balloon would burst the balloon and the bird would start gliding. It can glide for hundreds of kilometres landing down in some of the Japanese islands or the Pacific Ocean. The bird is made of wood and amphibious. It can go with the Ocean to United States or to Taiwan…The work was realized in September 2001, same time as the terrorist attacks to the World Trade Centre in New York. Japan Times wrote a big article about our birds that they are the anti-thesis of the New York terrorist attacks, because our birds are also hitting skyscrapers, but they are bringing hope, the connection between the modern man and nature.

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Team

Marco Casagrande

Architect

Nathalie Pozzi

Young master

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Bird Cage

Bird Cage

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team