Beehive Hotel Competition? What the...???

Arup Shortlisted for Beehive Hotel Competition

Five hotel designs have been shortlisted as part of Beyond the Hive, a competition launched by British Land and The City of London Corporation.

The five shortlisted hotels will be built by their design teams June 7-19, following which the public and expert judges will be invited to vote for their favourite.

Entrants to the competition were required to submit proposals for an ecologically sustainable and creative insect habitat. The shortlisted designs include:

The Bumblebee City Nesters by Fisher Tomlin

This design is inspired by the City of London’s prestigious tower buildings and uses a flexible system that allows it to be adapted to create anything from a two-storey wildlife B&B for smaller spaces, to a complete 5 star hotel for larger gardens.


The team will create a series of five towers ranging in height from 900 mm to 1,200 mm and made entirely from recycled materials, including recycled timber, recycled broom poles and garden and building waste.


Brookfield Bug Buddies by Brookfield Europe in collaboration with consultants Arup, DP9, Hilson Moran Partnership and Sir John Cass’s Foundation school, Stepney Way


Taking its inspiration from the City of London and the juxtaposition between the ancient past and the modern age, the hotel uses pipework of different widths and lengths sourced from the Pinnacle project. These are fixed together in a sweeping line, rising up from a recycled wood planter base.


Reinforcement bars used to create the framework will both support the structure and allow a plant climber, such as native traveller's joy, honeysuckle or hop.


Beevarian Antsel and Gretel Chalet by Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen



The design features reclaimed bricks to attract solitary bees, rotten logs for invertebrates, louvred boxes filled with bark for hibernating butterflies, a log drilled with holes for ladybirds and eaves filled with bamboo for lacewings. Set over three floors, all materials used to construct the hotel will be collected from within the City



The Insect Hotel by Arup Associates.The Insect Hotel by Arup Associates

The façade of the hotel consists of a series of compartments based on a Voronoi pattern found in the natural world, which generates a series of voids varying in size at a depth of 500m.


A variety of recycled waste materials and deadfall are loosely inserted into these voids, whilst the sides of the hotel are accessible for butterflies and moths, and the top is suitable for absorbing rain water through planting.



Inn Vertebrate by Metalanguage Design.Inn Vertebrate by Metalanguage Design

Designed to reflect the diverse architecture of London, the Inn is a multi-storey habitat with different-sized cavities to accommodate a wide variety of invertebrates. The inn will be constructed from recycled and reclaimed wood, bricks and off-cuts found in surrounding areas.


Cavities will be filled with soil and stones collected from the garden, whilst seeds for planting wildflowers will be donated by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.


Each of the sites will be visited by a panel of celebrated industry experts from the property, architecture and insect world.

 
 
 
Courtesy of Architecticture & Design