The unexplained colony collapse disorder (CCD) affecting beehives throughout the world has recently become a great concern, as more colonies of honeybees mysteriously die. Honeybees are the insects most responsible for the pollination of flowers, which in turn makes contemporary food production possible. Although no solution has been found to prevent CCD, there has been a rise in interest and participation in urban beekeeping as a means not only to remedy the loss of honeybee population, but also to further educate the public about the critical role honeybees play in our world ecosystem.

The b-Shack is a highly innovative beehive observation and study centre being designed, fabricated and assembled by graduate students in the Facility for Architectural Research in Media and Mediation (FARMM) at the McGill University School of Architecture. The b-Shack project is conceived to provide promotional and infrastructural support to urban beekeeping communities, in particular, the non-profit Montreal’s collectives: Santropol Roulant and the McGill Apiary Association. The program will allow these groups of volunteer educators and amateur beekeepers to share their knowledge and interest in bees with the public while engaging in bioresource engineering research initiatives focused on CCD. The project simultaneously encourages a group of young students in architectural research to practice responsibly, through the creation of a real world response to this plight of the bees. As a dedicated team of architecture and engineering students, we are equally interested on those architectural lessons that can be learnt from bees. There has existed an architectural fascination with bees and their organization for hundreds of years: our goal is to translate these ideals into material form.

TEAM:
Jason Crow (project director), Maria Mingallon (project director), Maria Nikolova, Naomi Hébert, Kyle Burrows, Emily Baxter, Chloé Blain, Alexandre Hamel, Lance Moore, Nicolas Demers-Stoddart, Sophie Wilkin, Justin Boulanger, Marlène Bambonye, Brighita Lungu, Brian Muthaliff, Farid Raner, Li-Anne Sayegh, Farid Rener, Veronica Lalli, Sanjeevan Tharmaratnam, Kelvin Kung, Etienne Sedillot, Ziad Ewais, Theodore Oyama, Anthony Plumb and Anca Matyiku.

Many thanks to all our SPONSORS:

MSDL Architects
NEUF Architects
Quo Vadis
Josef Zorko (DMA Architects)
Provencher Roy + Associés Architects
Evolute Tools
Oasys Software
Sustainability Projects Fund McGill University
Jason Crow

LINKS:

Website: http://farmmhouse.farmmresearch.com/bshack/index.html

Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/73302798

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FARMMresearch

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le b-Shack

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