Inspired by 1865

Collaboration Project, exhibited in Milano Salone 2015

This project was a collaboration between the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts and chemical giant BASF. Based on the technological and socioeconomic context on BASFs founding year, our class developed a series of objects using the companys state of the art plastics. The objects were exhibited at the Salone del Mobile 2015 in Milan.

Habitat for Honeybees

Inspired by 1865

In the mid-1800s the invention of standardized beehives with rectangular removable frames hung in parallel in defined distance lead the way to a mass-industrialization of honey production and further commodification of the Bee. The Habitat for Honey Bees is an attempt to give back a level of autonomy. The goal is explicitly not honey production. It is a beehive catered to needs of the bees, not those of the beekeepers.

In research I did my best to identify a typical bee colonies preferences in location and nature of the place they chose to build their hive structures. Habitat merely provides the vessel, the inside is deliberately left empty, free to be colonized. Its outer shape and form are quotations, based on bee architecture. The walls are borders, they communicate: what lies behind us is not human. For me as a human this goal of designing using non-human language was the most challenging part of the project.