School of Design at The Village West

Fear/Not explores the combination of bird scaring with “lure” tactics, which aim to attract birds to specified areas away from targeted crops, as a method of deterrence. It also examines how the spatial behavior of birds within vineyards can be analyzed and incorporated into designs to create more effective deterrents using a system-based approach. This project ultimately documents my inquiry into designing a wind-powered scarecrow that keeps birds away from farmlands without negatively impacting human, animal, and environmental welfare.

My initial research revealed that I could accomplish both scaring and luring strategies within one device by using a dual form derived from the hawk/goose phenomenon discovered in 1937. My design places this precedent on a vertical axis, so when the device rotates one way, it repels birds by mimicking a group of circling hawks; when it rotates in the other direction, it attracts birds by replicating geese. A noise maker in the center uses a woodpecker-shaped hammer to ring a series of bells when scaring, and has a rubber damper to fall silent when acting as a lure.

By combining predator and prey cues with the attributes of traditional scarecrows, updating the technology so it is tailored for the behavioral preferences of birds instead of against them, and creating a system that both repels and attracts birds, we can design a more harmless strategy for deterring birds from vineyards and reducing the damage that they cause to wine crops.

Charlie Grisham is a graduate student in the Master of Industrial Design (MID) program at Pratt Institute. The project fear//not was developed as part of his 2026 thesis research and explores alternative approaches to bird deterrence in vineyards through behavioral ecology, relational systems, and environmentally conscious design. Rather than relying on harmful or invasive deterrent methods, the project investigates how design can work with the perceptual and spatial intelligence of birds to create more adaptive and less destructive agricultural systems. The resulting proposal combines predator and prey cues into a wind-powered modular system inspired by the “hawk/goose” perceptual phenomenon, in which the same form can trigger fear or calm responses depending on its orientation. Designed as a lightweight, collapsible, and transformable structure, the device integrates movement, sound, and visual signaling while responding to the environmental and social conditions of vineyards. The project reflects an interdisciplinary approach connecting industrial design, animal behavior, agriculture, and ecological thinking through a speculative yet functional full-scale prototype.

Where the Headlines Stayed is a photographic series that places The Chair of Broken Headlines within abandoned buildings to explore the relationship between war, displacement, and domestic absence in Lebanon and the Middle East. Made from archival newspapers from the Middle East, the chair carries the public record of conflict, but in these interiors it becomes something more intimate: a seat for the bodies that are no longer there. The newspaper material carries public history: conflict, crisis, and the headlines that document political rupture. But when formed into a chair and placed inside ruined or abandoned spaces, those headlines become intimate, turning large-scale violence into something spatial, domestic, and deeply personal. The empty chair suggests not only who has left, but what remains after departure: memory, silence, and the traces of everyday life interrupted. In relation to my thesis, the series extends my interest in fragmentation, interiority, and the home as a site of performance and memory. These abandoned settings echo the fractured house in my thesis, where architecture becomes a container for loss, language, and the persistence of home even after dispersal.

Eliza Corderman, a member of the inaugural class of Pratt Institute’s MFA Fashion Collection + Communication program (2026), is a designer whose practice operates at the intersection of fashion, branding, and cultural commentary. Her thesis project, @wearplastic, is a satirical activewear brand that appropriates the visual language of contemporary athletic apparel to critically examine the widespread use of synthetic fabrics in the pursuit of health, wellness, and performance. Through a multidisciplinary approach encompassing film, photography, packaging, and physical products, @wearplastic investigates the contradiction of striving for physical well-being while being clothed in petroleum-derived materials such as polyester, nylon, and spandex. By transforming discarded plastic food packaging into athletic garments and reinterpreting familiar graphic systems such as nutrition facts labels, the project establishes a conceptual parallel between what we consume and what we wear. The work ultimately critiques contemporary consumer culture and encourages reflection on the environmental and bodily implications of synthetic material dependency within the fashion and wellness industries.