Chicken Chapel

• Audrey09.20.2011

  This is incredible! However, chickens will lay eggs wherever they feel like, including behind piles of wood on a cement floor in the shed, in a pile of mud, and on the floor of the coop, where mine actually all lay in a communal pile. Then one broody girl will lay on them all day lol :) This gives me some really great ideas, including adding frosted plexi on the sides of mine facing the sun in the morning! They just need some extra light for the house I will put them in for the winter...

• Ronald D. Butler09.20.2011

  I'm quoting my friend Cynthia Fore Miller here after she saw this slide show... "What keeps the foxes out of that fancy hen house? The actual cubbies should probably be slanted to the back a little instead of level AND they need straw in them. Those sweet city kids made a purty thang however. I suppose they could put a skillet in those cubbies and the omelette would be instantaneous.Just add a little hot plate on the side to cook directly in the hen house. I would not want to crush their ambition by being the one to tell them the facts of chicken house lore." --- This is a great structure...these details will work themselves out in time! Thanks, Ron

• Miyoko Ohtake09.20.2011

  Thanks for the comments. There are doors on both sides (a normal door on the "person" side and a door that slides up and down on the chicken side), though it's admittedly hard to see the person door in the images. There will be straw available for the chicken soon, Moskow assures me.

• Fleur09.21.2011

  I like the design! Great idea and the fact the building materials are sourced on the doorstep. The structure is a high one, I can't see from the photos if there are coops and chick cubby holes higher up nearer to the roof inside, and a ramp that the chickens would love to go up and down on. Chickens are foraging creatures originally found in jungles (yes really!) so they like to be active so this would give them more room to forage and explore at different heights whilst using the whole area and structure of the Chicken Chapel too.

• Kathy Hayward09.23.2011

  Instead of tilting the nest boxes, just add a small strip of wood to the bottom front to hold the straw and eggs inside. Leave at least a 1/2-inch gap between the strip and the bottom of the nest, so you have room to sweep dirt and bits of straw out the front when cleaning the nests.

• Ross McDougall09.23.2011

  It's disappointing that Keith sees construction work as "lowly". It's part of the devaluing of manual labour generally in our society I suspect and; I beg to differ. Whilst Keith has had construction experience, in my observation as a client-side project manager architects often view construction as "lowly" and accordingly have embarrassingly (for them) little practical experience of how buildings - even simple ones - are constructed. Congratulations to the students for participating in this project - if they can extend this into gaining experience in building something much more complex, such as a house, I suspect the further knowledge gained will also serve them well in their careers.

• John09.24.2011

  I studied design, and found myself happier to be a carpenter. Around our home place are several follies, none quite so exotic as this chicken house. We are now thirty years in to this process, and rebuilding what has lasted. Watching what time and chickens will do to that lovely little structure is part of the joy of doing what you want. Pouring effort into a silly idea is glorious. A young designer/builder becomes an old one, soon enough.

• Dialect09.26.2011

  As a builder and an architecture graduate nearly seven years ago, I do not think the same about the construction process. But, I do design/build now and have been for four years. I do think much of the design unfolds and develops in the field. The process is not lowly at all, rather, a continuation and future development of the drawings, design and details with respect to the context. I work at a firm in charlotte NC by the name of dialectdesign - Dialectdesign.com - which no longer will do the design without the build part, a complete design process.

• Carolyn Morton09.29.2011

  I love this piece and commentary and many of the comments. I have worked in the Architecture field as a Jr. Interior Designer, where I picked up on some of the architectural details, and after many more yr.s as a Graphic Designer, and Environmental Designer. I now work with my partner doing home repair and improvement. The hands on building and constructing is very informative, and I would recommend it as part of a Architect or Interior Designers education.

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