Co-occupied Boundaries

Art is easily found in nature but rarely is what considered art today inherently natural. The concept of co-occupied mediums that serve to be both functional for nature and aesthetically pleasing to people is being actively explored by Asya Ilgun and Phil Ayres, from the CITAstudio at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In their 2016 Whitepaper, they described building a 3D printed scaffolding that could become “embellished through the self-organized construction” of bees.” The idea is that bees will add the form to the basic shape presented by the artists, and through their own construction of hives, introduce a unique beauty that is as pleasing to the eye as it is a functional hub for the bees. The bees, successfully established, would have a safe structure and space to establish a colony and also be able to provide benefits to the surrounding area by acting as pollinators. Aside from the aesthetics, the project was formed with the intention of highlighting the dependence humans have on fauna, particularly in urban contexts where few species thrive naturally. Ilgun and Ayres are in a sense relegating design to that of nature, which would allow structures to shift and adapt through active maintenance of the bees and other fauna. The Whitepaper does not describe any action taken to begin building the project; introducing the idea and offering concrete design parameters for the base form in their paper, but they do make an interesting foray into the field of nature-based architecture.

Ilgun, Asya and Phil Ayres. 2016. “Self-Organised Embellishment of 3D Printed Scaffolds for the Production of Co-Occupied Architectural Boundaries.”

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