Yuan Kang
Mendel’s Legacy: The Bee Garden and Educational Apiary
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Bees garden mapping in Brno
Bees Windows
Beeswax is a material used by bees to build their nests. I am exploring the possibility of using bee building materials to build human's. I am trying to incorporate beeswax into the design of Belvedere Moment.
As I walk up the staircase at the entrance of the Tugendhat Villa, I am struck by the soft and luminous quality of the milky white glass walls. The transparency of the glass reminds me of the transparency of beeswax, and I imagine how beautiful it would be to melt the beeswax onto a fabric and hang it on the window to catch the wind, creating a sound that is reminiscent of the vibrating wings nurtured by bees.
Another fascinating material selection in VILLA TUGENDHAT is this agate wall. When the low angle sun shines in, the agate wall becomes warm and vibrant, changing the atmosphere of the entire space.
Therefore, in this window, beeswax bricks became the perfect substitute for agate walls. Beeswax bricks not only have unique properties of transparency, but also have natural variations in depth throughout the entire brick wall due to changes in firing time and temperature.
In the stairwell, as tourists strolled up step by step, sunlight shone in, and the red and white shimmers merged into this landscape tower.
Bees Garden
Through the encounters between insects and scientists, we can discover new insights into the ecology of intimate relationships and subtle propositions between species. This emotional ecology is characterized by creativity and curiosity, which are shared across various experimental lifestyles of practitioners, not limited to humans alone. To effectively address the current situation of ecological irresponsibility, we must embrace this ecological thinking mode.
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Architectural Organization
In Mendel's garden, a series of beehives nestled on a rugged mountain range. A beehive is an aerial structure made of wood to keep the hive dry.
So I placed a house with a similar wooden structure on the same high and low scattered hills as a bee workshop. This allows users to assist in operating the hive and extracting honey.
The building and beehive sit quietly overhead in the mountains. The curved undulations of the garden change with the terrain.
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Belvedere Moments
bees window model
Belvederes Moment 3
Belvederes Moment 1
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Tower top section
Belvederes Moment 2
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Building Drawings
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Tower Assembly Drawing
entrance view
Plans
Light contrast
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Description
In the era of Anthropocene, a new Belvedere is underway to depict a diverse range of species living together in a symbiotic environment. As an important contact point for human research on non-human organisms, bees have become a starting point for this emerging picture.
The eminent scientists Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel were both fascinated by bees, and Mendel had an experimental garden at St Thomas's Abbey in Brno, dedicated to bee breeding. Darwin's emotional ecosystem garden, described in Evolutionary Momentum: Affective Ecology and the Sciences of Plant/Insect Encounters, also drew inspiration from bees' flight patterns and visits to wild orchids. The proposed architecture will house programs that provide insights into metamorphosis that differ from those offered by museums and scientific societies. This emotional ecology addresses issue of species difference in the context of influence, entanglement, and rupture and is crucial in challenging the current state of ecological instability.
Located at the boundary between a disused sandstone quarry and the native woodland of Red Hill, the experimental garden serves as a place for bees to be in the city while providing a place for emotional entanglement between humans and nature. The garden's hillside location allows visitors to observe the surrounding urban landscape of Brno, including Mendel's original experimental bee garden. The building construction combines warm, curved, and decorated rammed earth, irregular stones, locally sourced wood, fabricated steel, and walls and fabric cladding made from beeswax. This material selection and application, together with plants and bees, creates an emotional ecology across humans and non-human species. As visitors explore the building, the focus of the scenery shifts accordingly. The entrance ramp, protected by a repetitive wooden frame, gives a view of the nearby woodland to the north. The workshop views are of the beehives, against the backdrop of the city. Finally visitors arrive at the Bee Tower, that boasts a double-sided belvedere, with the sun illuminating the beeswax fabric and beeswax walls, creating a breathtaking atmosphere.
Yuan Kang
Mendel’s Legacy: The Bee Garden and Educational Apiary
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