Ikea invites you to build your own customisable bee home

A "Bee Home" design by Space 10. Photos: AFP Relaxnews

Swedish furniture giant Ikea is flying to the rescue of the industrious little creatures who are so essential to our environment by providing everyone with plans to build their own bee home.

The project was launched on the occasion of the United Nations World Bee Day on May 20.

To develop the project, the blue and yellow brand called on its design lab Space10, the studio Bakken & Bæck and designer Tanita Klein.

The result of this collaboration is the Bee Home, a free and open-source design project.

"Bee Home takes advantage of the newest developments in digital fabrication and parametric design, and introduces entirely new distribution methods to enable a fully democratic design process, where anyone can design and fabricate their own Bee Home locally to place in their gardens, balconies or neighbourhoods," explains Space10.

The Bee Home is a free and open-source design project.

"To reconnect with the many bees in our environment, we need to give back what we have taken from them: their homes. By designing new interactive experiences, we can create a more sustainable manufacturing process for doing so," explains Myles Palmer, the project lead at Bakken & Bæck, who also points out that the bee home "is truly open-sourced, informed by local living, and customisable for many contexts and uses". The bee dwelling construction process has three main stages. The first step is to visit the website www.beehome.design, where you can design your own Bee Home in accordance with predefined parameters for its size, height and location, i.e. rooftop, courtyard or balcony.

"This project really exemplifies how design can do good for both people and their environment," explains designer Tanita Klein.

When you are satisfied with your design, download the plans and then transfer them to your local makerspace. If you don't know where that is, no need to worry, the website will provide you with a few addresses close to your home.

Finally, once your Bee Home has been produced by the digital milling machine, you just have to place it in your preferred location, and surround it with flowers.

"I want people to design a dream home for bees that provides the perfect environment for their offspring, while at the same time being incredibly easy to design, assemble and place. It was important for me that Bee Home is aesthetically pleasing and almost feels like you've added a sculpture to your garden or your balcony. This project really exemplifies how design can do good for both people and their environment," explains designer Tanita Klein.