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Windermere, British Columbia, Canada
Commission: Studio North                                                                                      

This treetop perch sits on wooden stilts along a forested hillside, and accommodates two people. The whimsical façade has 12 birdhouses, each designed for various local birds that live in the mountains of the Columbia Valley in British Columbia.

Built of sturdy lodge pole pines foraged from a nearby forest ravaged by fire, the hut is nestled in a cross-braced structure. The platform and cladding for the hut is made of planks reclaimed from an old cabin deck. The front facade is clad with western red cedar shingles cut with a custom rounded profile, the radius which was determined by the size of the birdhouse opening and the width of each shingle.

To give a sense of canopy of the trees, the roof of the birdhut disappears with polycarbonate panels, which results in the space getting heated by the sun. A bridge was built to connect the hut to the hillside, and a stone path leads down to a natural spring and campfire.  

The materials, form, and orientation of the birdhut were designed to offer nesting opportunities for as wide a variety of local birds as possible.