At-home fruit and veggie gardens are nothing new, but a growing trend amongst those trying to go more organic are backyard chicken coops. Our friends at Dwell recently shared the story of one design-minded couple who’ve forgone pesky rolls of chicken wire and gone all-out with an incredible chicken abode for their feathery friends. Not only is the construction spacious enough for three chickens, but the coop also features reclaimed cedar wood on its siding and a green roof to keep the interior cool!
Architects Mitchell Snyder and Shelley Martin were inspired to create their chicken coop when they moved fromBrooklyn to Portland and found themselves with a sizable yard. The idea for the coop initially grew out of the garden when Shelley started growing a vegetable bed and a friend over at Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply suggested she try keeping hens. From there Mitchell got to work in Google SketchUp and Shelley bought their first chicks, housing them under lamps in the basement until the coop was completed.
The resulting coop is an incredible four-foot cube with a 4-foot by 15-foot run – in accordance with recommended chicken-raising guidelines – giving each bird two square feet in the coop and four square feet in the run. The spacious coop is a sleek, modern box finished with reclaimed cedar siding and ventilated with two high-set windows. Crowning the structure is a living roof – and while the chickens won’t be lounging on it, the rooftop greens do manage to help keep the interior cool. In the warm months when the three hens lay eggs, collection is quick and easy thanks to a smartly designed hinged window that allows for discrete access to the interior.
The project is more than just a source for something to scramble — Mitchell says, “We didn’t know what they were going to be like, but we didn’t just get them for the eggs; they’re really fun as pets, too.”
Via Dwell
