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Bee-ing Sustainable

Preparing for a recent lecture on sustainable design was an eye-opening experience; wading through the myriad issues and approaches made me realise, as many others already have, of how complex and contested this area is.  We know that design is part of the sustainable problem, and that it is and can be a part of the solution – yet exactly what are the best ways that designers can use their skills to embrace the opportunity (as Paola Antonelli has recently positively spun it) that sustainable design presents is still unresolved.

There is though one aspect that does seem to unite several of those pursuing the eco agenda; a persistent interest in bees.  As articles in Forbes and elsewhere indicate, this isn’t a terribly original insight.  Nevertheless, bees and beekeeping seem to cut across the multiple approaches to sustainable design - much of which, unsurprisingly at least for those who know my interests, are caught up with the resurgence of interest in craft. 

One of the first designers to embrace the advantages of the apian in recent years was of course Tomás Gabzdil Libertiny, most notably with his 2007’s Made by Bees vase for Droog.

Tomáš Gabzil Libertiny, Made by Bees, 2007, beeswax, limited edition, Droog.
Photo: Mocoloco.


The Slovakian-born, Netherlands based designer has conducted a number of experiments with beeswax; first with 2006’s oversized amphora The Dialectics of Desire and most recently with a limited edition series of vessels. 
Tomáš Gabzil Libertiny,The Dialectics of Desire, 2006.  Photo: Studio Libertiny.
Tomáš Gabzil Libertiny, Vessel #2, 2011. Beeswax.  Photo: Studio Libertiny.

It is however the Made by Bees that most chimes with the sustainable debate.  On the one hand, it taps into the tenets of slow design, the movement that aims to put a brake on the excessive speed of consumption and production at which the world currently operates.  On average It takes 40,000 bees one week to make one of these vases, a week that can only take place between April and June; for good reason Gabzil Libertiny described this process as one of ‘slow prototyping’.  

On the other, the vase is also an example of the Cradle to Cradle approach championed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.  Bees make a honeycomb vase to hold flowers that bees pollinate to make a honeycomb vase…and it goes on, illustrating the circularity and in-sync rhythms of nature’s systems that are seen as ways to engender a more sustainable society.  Bees have long been recognised as the model for this - it was after all a beekeeper that the Latin poet Virgil chose to illustrate the desired-for seasonality of agriculture in his didactic Georgics poems.

Many designers are attempting to reconnect man with the rhythms, speeds and seasonality of nature’s cycles.  Unveiled at the 2011 Dutch Design Week, the most recent Philips Design Probe was dedicated to the Microbial Home, a self-described ‘domestic eco-system’ that proposes the same circularity as Gabzil Libertiny’s vase, albeit for an entire kitchen set-up in which all waste is filtered for re-use.

Microbial Home, Philips Design Probe, 2012.  Photo mocoloco.

Furthermore, one part of the design is an urban beehive, designed not only to help preserve and grow the world’s declining bee population, but also produce honey, wax and propolis, a widely used alternative medicine, for personal use.
Urban Beehive, Philips Design Probe, 2012.  Photo: mocoloco.

Philip’s design is one of a number of recent examples of redesigned beehives for urban living.  For the designer Ben Faga, it raises questions about the reality of this new proximity between man and bee, as expressed in his If You Build It, They Will Come project from 2010.

Ben Faga, If You Build It, They Will Come, 2011.  Photo: Dezeen.

Designed during his MA in Design Interactions at the RCA, Faga’s beehives offer a speculative take on the domestic beehive.  Called ‘bait-hives’, they are designed to attract as many swarming bees as possible, forcing us even closer into the proximity with nature that he, and all the examples here, suggest are desirable – and yet could have unexplored outcomes as we attempt to reconnect with the rural.
 
Finally, beehives offer a way to reconnect with our surroundings in another way.  Local bees produce local honey; a proximate, transparent and therefore palatable provenance of production that several brands have been keen to latch onto.  Since 2008 the rooftop of Fortnum & Mason, the Piccadilly-based purveyor of luxuries, has been home to a colony bees producing honey deemed so exclusive it even has its own waiting list.

Beehives on the top of Fortnum & Mason.  Photo: The Telegraph.
Fortnum & Mason is just one brand to jump on the bee bandwagon; Tate Modern and even Buckingham Palace are two other examples of those seeing new ways to harness their london acreage.  What they, and all the examples cited here suggest, is that bees offer not only a desirable form of produce, but also a model for production that is not only slow, but intensely satisfying for all those seeking a way out of the excesses of our currently largely un-sustainable society.  More examples of bee-ing sustainable are therefore sure to follow.


 



 
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