Sadic Apiaries_acquiescence of the wild
2013 // no specific location // hypothesis //
competition: Unbuilt Visions 2014, Grand Prize Winner
w/ Brian Buckner _ advisor: Francoise Roche
Overview
Can we orient nature to produce architecture ?
Can we use the animal organization to generate an (un)natural artifice ?
Can we employ sadistic instruments to construct a domesticity of wax ?
Can the immateriality of smoke create space ?
Through an employment of sadistic instruments within an artificial hive apparatus, a multiplicity of bee colonies constructs a domesticity of wax over a period of time. The hypothesis is focused on controlling the energy of the bee so as to produce architecture full of odor, taste, sounds, and touch that moves, wet and slippery in some areas, sticky and hairy in others; the resulting space will finally be cannibalized by its natural context justifying the internal process of Birth and Thanatos.
The protocol for construction is the utilization of a natural agent animal - the honey bee - its expended energy, and its consequential construct. The bee is the assembler and
its derivatives are the spatial artifact.
The process begins in the containment device - a cavernous, mobile, artificial housing - that reveals its interior construct of layered wax honeycomb with time. The containment
device actively engages and amends the agents’ behaviors by negotiating the solid void relationship inherent in the agents’ constructive nature.
A sequence of internal sadistic devices intent upon aggravating and torturing the bees further calculates the consequence of the agents’ energy. The instruments employ smoke to ensure a continuous void space for habitation through the hive construction and create surface deformation of the structure. Over time the exposure to the external biotope defines a battle between the natural phenomena and the semi - artificial structure. The wax looses its consistency and color and eventually disintegrates, thus triggering the death of this architecture.