IKEA’s research and design lab SPACE10 has created a new open source Bee Home. Working with Bakken & Bæck and designer Tanita Klein, the team has launched the free Bee Home project to coincidence with the United Nations International Bee Day. The project takes advantage of digital fabrication and parametric design so that people can design and fabricate their own Bee Home locally.
Constructed as part of Agrikultura—a triennial of public artworks and urban interventions in Malmö, Sweden—this installation, described by the designers a "maquette of a monument to the honeybee", is in fact home to an entire colony. It references—by design—the mysterious elements of 'bee orientation': verticality (gravity), geometry (the cell structure of the beehive), and the position of the sun relative to the hive. The project is, on the one hand, "a potential memorial for the bees" while, on the other, "a celebration of the sun on which all life depends."
