THE BEE SPA

by Thuy-Trang Dao

90 percent of wild plants and 75 percent of leading global crops for human consumption depend on Bee pollination. California’s fertile Central Valley, is home to 80 percent of the world’s almond supply, where commercial beekeepers send their hives to almond farms across the US and seeing one-third of commercial US bee colonies wiped.

The Bee Spa provides a sustainable and diverse agricultural system for bees to thrive within the almond farm, and connecting humans with bees.

The bee’s pathway around the almond trees, informs the structure and rhythm of the design. Physical and digital experiments of the structural parameters of the Nepenthes plant, the origami form is manipulated to the curvature. Using the waste of the almonds such as the Hulls and Shells, heat compressed into a material for the structure and then used for biofuel as a source of energy.