A notebook about design projects and provocations written by Raphael Grignani in California since 2005.

My friend/colleague/ex-boss/cyclist-extraordinaire Rhys Newman inks nearly daily wonderful half ideas that rarely exist beyond the thick pages of his moleskine – he refers to the more elaborate ones as lost projects. Once in a while, one of these half ideas gain momentum through peer pressure and drastic interventions, and end-up finding their way to the model shop across the US101. This is what happened with the Bird on a Wire Houses.

Photo © 2008 Rhys Newman

Rhys hand-built with the help of his children 12 beautiful aromatic cedar birdhouses and sent them to 12 of his friends around the world — Los Angeles, Tokyo, Sydney, San Francisco, Guelph, Seattle, Builth Wells, Brighton, Helsinki, Buenos Aires, Panguitch Lake & Cardiff. I picked up mine in Los Angeles early January, but kept deferring the deed. In reality, I didn’t really know how to go about it…. and was a bit scared.

Photo © 2008 Rhys Newman

Rhys’ instruction was to throw them. I felt it was a very bad idea (sorry Rhys!), and reckoned that I would be better off attaching a fishing line with a padlock to the bird house, chucking it over the wire, and hiking the birdhouses up. Since I wasn’t totally sure about this, I started to ask suggestions from the creative minds of San Francisco. “How would you hang one these birdhouse on a 20-feet-high wire in Mission/16th – one of the busiest intersection of San Francisco?” A bunch of people recommended to get a really long pole, others suggested to bribe the driver of a firetruck or one of these cherry picker, some advised climbing a really tall ladder. Needless to say, I wasn’t convinced.

Photo © 2008 Raphael Grignani – Left: wiring 1, Right: wiring 2

Last week, I met my friends Ben and Jenn for dinner at Weird Fish and brought the birdhouses with me. They volunteered to help me without much convincing – it’s always better to have cellmates you know… So after dinner, we headed wine-buzzed to Mission & 16th. We looked around, smiled at the CCTVs, nodded at the crazies, crackheads, and other colourful characters. Time to get to work. Ben gracefully climbed on the traffic box on the north west-corner, successfully threw the padlock over the wire on the first attempt, I caught it, and started to hike the houses up. After the first pull, we realised that the string wasn’t threaded through the birdhouses at the right angle. Ten minutes later, the wire gave in and the houses crashed in the middle of the street. FAIL.

Got back home and started immediately to prototype using my shower rod. Half an hour later, I had the solution. More holes! SMSed Jenn and Ben to arrange a time to meet a couple of days later. After dinner at Monk’s Kettle, we walked back to Mission & 16th, but this time around there were a lot more people on the streets including cops in the middle of the intersection. Since they were not going anywhere, we had to find a new spot. After a stroll on Valencia, checking out every wire, we decided to hung them on the quiet 19th street just west of Valencia with the Oh-so-San-Francisco view to the Sutro Tower.

Photo © 2008 Raphael Grignani

This time it was a lot easier – less traffic, less crazies, lower wire, no CCTVs. Ben chucked the padlock over the wire, hiked the birdhouses, they tipped over the wire at the second try, cut the fishing line, and slowly pulled it out. SUCCESS!

A few days later, the Bird on a Wire House is still there. If you are in San Francisco, go check it out. To see where the other birdhouses are, visit the Bird on a Wire Houses flickr group and Rhys’ website.