Students build eco-friendly birdhouses

Some of Dayton’s birds will soon be living in eco-friendly style.
Students in Paul Schilling’s Design Basics 3D class (VIS 107) are constructing birdhouses from old pallets and in the process are both learning about design fundamentals and providing housing for some of Dayton’s many birds.
Although birdhouse building has been a staple of the 3D design class for several years, this is the first year that will emphasize using recycled building materials.
“I had a wild idea in my head about how to engage students,” says Schilling, “change the parameters of the project from where the students buy their own wood to something that’s recycled, that essentially costs Sinclair money to throw away.”
The 30 pallets used for the projects were acquired from Shipping and Receiving office at Sinclair, and were going to have to be transported from the campus and disposed of.
Although Schilling says that promoting bird housing is one objective of the project, the houses are generally designed more for aesthetics than habitability.
“Students take into account architectural styles or art movements that they want to model their birdhouse after,” says Schilling. “You see bird houses at Walmart or Lowes, and it seems like the same cookie cutter birdhouse…here they have an opportunity to jump into a market that nobody’s really in.”
Schilling says that eco-friendliness is catching on in the design world, from interior designers to industrial designers to graphic designers, “some companies have realized that it’s really good for the environment, and on top of that it saves money.”
He hopes that his students will learn that “not only can you utilize the resources around you, but in addition to that, you can create design with that, [design] that sells.”
The class’s 21 students each designed their own birdhouse, and had to first create small models and run their plans by the woodshop to ensure that they could produce what they had designed. Students usually consider making birdhouses a fun project, according to Schilling.
“Forcing them to go outside and use some power tools and cut these apart, hopefully that remains and sticks in their mind,” says Schilling. “Hopefully this is an experience that gets catalogued and they can pull from it someday.”