Glazed DroppingIn our research on motifs and artifacts, we came across several architectural premises, namely Pigeon Towers or Dovecotes. Although prevalent in Europe, the origin of these architectural structures can be traced back to Iran, Egypt, and India known as the Kabutra/ Chabutra. Pigeon towers provided shelter for pigeons and were also an economic asset with an embedded mechanism for collecting droppings, a valuable fertilizer. Our attempt is to investigate conceptually and materially the relation between past/history, present/ contemporaneity, and tradition through this particular project. Staying true to our approach, we built smaller renditions of the pigeon towers as pigeon columns -either as a whole or in fragments- implementing pottery skills in experimenting with clay, the traditional material for the construction of the towers. Each column is made out of ceramic bowl units stacked atop one another supported by a base.
20x96x20 in
Clay
2019