Birds in boxes

Description

Birds in boxes is part of a larger decoration project that the artist Erik Heide carried out in collaboration with the architectural firm Friis and Moltke when he decorated Tinglev Town Hall in 1977. The sculpture consists of two square cast-iron boxes with handles. Inside the boxes, two granite birds live on separate floors.

The proportions of the boxes are repeated in fields on the façade of the building. The repetition is not a coincidence. Erik Heide was in close dialogue with the architects throughout the process.

The bird theme continues inside the house, where five cast-iron reliefs decorate the brown brick walls. The reliefs depict whimsical birds standing on each other's heads. Simple birds flying, and an entire end wall with birds whirling over rooftops, on clouds and bound together by sun and moon.

The many birds are intended to create a link between outside and inside, as the architects have also sought to do with the large windows and brown bricks found in both the interior and exterior spaces.