This complex in Rakov Potok, a small town near Samobor, in Croatia, is an eco-friendly poultry farm devoted to research on the production of CO2-free chicken eggs, but it was also built with the express intention of raising awareness about chicken breeding in general and everything it yields. All this was born with the particular mission – increasingly necesssary in western societies, cut off today from the countryside like never before – of explaining to children, even in rural areas, where eggs come from.

The metaphor of the ‘chicken village’ is materialized in the composition of the project, where the coops of the animals (three types of units: for egg-laying hens, broilers, and chicks) are placed amid facilities serving complementary functions. Everything is organized by a main public street that stretches on the axis of the premises, and which from the entrance leads visitors on a tour of the different parts of the ‘village,’ including ‘plazas’ and ‘public buildings,’ most of them lifted off the ground in order to facilitate and simplify cleaning and maintenance work for the farmers while forming protected shade for the chickens. Budget limits warranted the use of cheap but robust materials, especially unpolished firwood and chicken wire, and all the work was done by amateur metal workers, the investor’s neighbors and friends...[+]