A Nest for Crows - Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Birdhouses

A Nest for Crows

Walter Hood
Hood Design Studio: Chris Derry, Laura Cui, Sarita Schreiber

Bottle caps, wood, wire, rope
10 ft. × 10 ft. × 15 ft.
Plant Family Collection

Artist Walter Hood reflects on how our public space ecology has recently been transformed. “Our surroundings became littered with trash and discarded domestic elements,” Hood explains. “Enter the crows.” Hood’s birdhouse, A Nest for Crows, reimagines the relationship: Humans become scavengers in this piece, collecting small bottle caps and discarded objects. The result is a home, for crows, “woven together to create form for new life.”

  • A black and white photo of a pensive Black man

    Walter Hood (b. 1958, U.S.) is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and the 2021 Architectural League’s President’s Medal.

    Artist website: hooddesignstudio.com
    Instagram: @hooddesignstudio

Photo: Courtesy of Walter Hood

Listen

Crow Dialectic
Elliot Bergman

This recording from The Birdsong Project was selected to complement this birdhouse.

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