Bee Sensitive: Adapting Infrastructures for Multi-species Futures

Design Team: Cole Thornton, Kaitlyn Knight

This project re-imagines an industrial, chemical-using tomato farm as a community-owned agrihood where the threatened American bumblebee is integrated into all aspects of design and production. Traditional retaining ponds become wet meadows where bees can forage and humans can explore. Mono-cultures become intercropped matrices that provide for human plates and pollinator palates. Fallen limbs and leaves create sculpture and organization for humans as well as a winter home for hibernating queen bees.

The project takes the form of a speculative narrative highlighting the limits and harms of traditional industrial agriculture and proposing what a multi-species infrastructure might look like. The works presented here are the different phases of the life cycle of an American bumblebee colony that are intertwined with the agricultural cycles of the farm: overwintering in woody debris, early spring foraging, nest-building, and continued foraging. The series of drawings illustrate the transformation through overlapped plan and section perspectives showing the redesigned agricultural spaces supporting each life-phase of the bumblebee.