The mobile apiary is an addition to the Chicago Honey Co-op's existing farm
in Lawndale. The co-op provides employment, education, and opportunity to
an area of the city lacking investment. Bee behavior and the co-op's strategies
are inspiration for the project.
The co-op's existing farm is built with cheap, prefabricated, and reused
materials. The new structure seeks to capture both the reuse of
skins and high degree of mobility. The urban apiary proposes a use of the
rail lines just 16 feet above the site a corridor for
future relocation.
The mobility and adaptive reuse are accomplished through the shell of a box car.
The form blends in to the site much like the existing storage containers.
Moving the farm along the rail lines is efficient and appropriate as the
areas bordering railways tend to be contested territory.
section showing 3 programs :
honey processing on the left, open community gathering in the center, and buisness/wax production to the right
apiary on site :
large rail viaduct behind can be used to transport the whole farming operation as necessary
digitaly fabricated tile :
a parametric hexagonal grid was exposed to a "dancing bee" to generate a beeformed irregularity
euvolemic
