Flights of fancy: designs for bird houses by the world’s most famous architects

Earlier this year, Lord Foster of Thames Bank O.M. invited nine of the world’s other leading architects to explore a project more intimate than they were perhaps used to: building a bird house.

The initiative was conceived by Lord Foster alongside Marie Donnelly, and the open brief had no boundaries or rules. Their only message was that each bird house was to be created in support of the Tessa Jowell Foundation, which was set up in memory of the UK’s former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who died from brain cancer in 2018. The foundation is geared towards providing better treatment for people with the disease in the future.

Tessa Jowell’s daughter, Jess Mills, is the foundation’s CEO. ‘It is the greatest privilege to have had the opportunity to work on this extraordinary project with Lord Foster and the world’s great architects over this past year,’ she says. ‘All the funds raised will go to support our mission to transform treatment and care for brain cancer patients across the UK. Brain cancer is the biggest cancer killer of children and people under 40, and of course is the cancer that Mum died from, so this is very personal, and urgent work.’

‘I have a passion for design at every scale, whether it’s a bird feeder or the masterplan for a city,’ says Lord Foster. ‘It’s exciting to see how each of us has interpreted the same brief in such distinct and thoughtful ways. There is a shared sense of intention — balancing functionality with sculptural shapes.’

The 10 avian sanctuaries — produced by David Chipperfield, Frida Escobedo, Sou Fujimoto, Lina Ghotmeh, Grafton Architects, Jacques Herzog, Farshid Moussavi, Renzo Piano, Kazuyo Sejima and Norman Foster himself — demonstrate the incredible diversity of the architects’ imagination. From 8 to 14 October 2025, alongside Christie’s 20th/21st Century Art sales, they will be on show in London ahead of a dedicated charity auction on the final day.

Here we take a look at five of the designs.

Jacques Herzog

Born in Basel in 1950, Jacques Herzog met his future collaborator, Pierre de Meuron, while still at school. They both studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich under Aldo Rossi — the first Italian to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize — before establishing Herzog & de Meuron in 1978.

Among the more than 600 projects they’ve completed in over 40 countries are the redevelopment of London’s Bankside Power Station to create Tate Modern, Beijing’s ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg and the M+ museum complex in Hong Kong. The company has been garlanded with the Pritzker Prize, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, the Praemium Imperiale and the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. Herzog has also been a visiting professor at Harvard since 1989.

Called Utensil, Herzog’s feeder consists of a shallow bath on top of a granary filled with seed. It’s imagined entirely from everyday kitchen items and promotes ‘circular design’ — a sustainable approach that aims to eliminate waste. It was created specifically with smaller bird species in mind, as these often struggle to find food and water in dense urban environments owing to habitat loss and pollution.

Renzo Piano

Piano was born in Genoa in 1937. After graduating from the Politecnico di Milano, he went on to found Piano & Rogers with the British Italian architect Richard Rogers, winning the competition to design Paris’s Centre Pompidou.

In 1981, he established his own firm, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, which has offices in Genoa and Paris. Some of his most significant projects include the Shard in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens. He has been awarded the Pritzker, the AIA Gold Medal and the Kyoto Prize.

Piano approached his design by initially observing birds in his own garden, in order to gain a better understanding of their seasonal needs. The result of this research is a lantern-like structure that provides birds with food and shelter during the winter and fresh water in the summer. It’s light enough to be suspended from a branch.

Kazuyo Sejima

The architect Kazuyo Sejima graduated from Japan Women’s University in 1981. In 1987, she set up her own studio in Tokyo, and five years later was named Young Architect of the Year by the Japan Institute of Architects.

In 1995, along with Ryue Nishizawa, Sejima founded the architecture studio SANAA, which designed the New Museum in New York, the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, the Louvre’s satellite museum in Lens and the soon-to-open Taichung Art Museum in Taiwan. In 2010, she was made director of the Venice Architecture Biennale. That same year, she also became only the second woman to win the Pritzker Prize.

Sejima’s feeder takes the form of a shallow aluminium bowl. While birds stop to perch, drink and bathe, they can see themselves, as well as the sky and surroundings, reflected in the metal’s highly polished surface, like a mirage that shifts with the time of day and the passing of the seasons. Sejima suggests that the ring that fixes the bowl to a tree branch or railing could even be placed around a finger or a wrist, inviting a range of possible interactions between people and birds.

Grafton Architects

The Irish architects Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell both graduated from University College Dublin in 1974, co-founding Grafton Architects together four years later in the same city. Some of their best-known work includes Bocconi University in Milan, the UTEC campus in Lima, the Toulouse School of Economics and the Marshall Building at the London School of Economics.

The pair represented Ireland at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002, then again in 2008. A decade later, they were invited back to curate the festival. In 2020, they were awarded the Pritzker Prize and RIBA’s highest honour, the Royal Gold Medal.

‘It was a wonderful challenge to think about birds as our clients,’ say the architects. ‘How could we make a place which would attract species of all sizes to come and feed, wash, drink, sing?’

Standing two metres high, their delicate bronze-and-copper feeder is a rotating, cantilevered structure that coils in a shape inspired by the Fibonacci sequence. It provides a spot to perch, protected by a moon-shaped ring, and a waterfall consisting of three ‘tip-cups’ that flow into a bath.

Norman Foster

The architect founded Foster + Partners in London in 1967. Since then, the business has expanded to include offices in more than 20 countries and has been responsible for a huge range of work, from urban masterplans to public infrastructure, as well as iconic civic and cultural buildings.

Some of Lord Foster’s most recognisable designs include the HSBC Building in Hong Kong, the new Reichstag in Berlin, Apple’s headquarters in California and the Gherkin in London. He has won the Pritzker Prize, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal and the Praemium Imperiale, and in 1999 was honoured with a life peerage in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. He has also been vice president of the Architectural Association in London, a council member of the Royal College of Art and a founding trustee of the Architecture Foundation, and is president of the Norman Foster Foundation.

The design was the result of research into birds’ feeding habits through the seasons and the discovery that bird feeders can be significant sites for the transmission of diseases. The result is a structure that is easy to disassemble, clean and restock with food and water. Its matt-green finish — of a kind commonly associated with garden furniture — helps it blend discreetly into outdoor settings.

Architects for the Birds, sold in support of the Tessa Jowell Foundation, will be on view at Christie’s in London, 8-14 October 2025, prior to the auction on 14 October