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So 10 square feet.
Can anybody picture how large that actually is?
Typical answer is 2 feet by 5 feet.
But can you actually visualize how large that is?
Ten square feet is about the size of an airplane bathroom.
To visualize that for you.
Ten square feet is actually smaller
than this red dot that I am standing on right now.
And 10 square feet is the footprint of Elevator B.
Which today I want to talk about the impact
that this very small project has had
for its clients, for its owner,
for its designers, for its site and for its city.
So Elevator B is a 22 foot tall, stainless steel clad,
steel tube structured bee hive.
It's located in Silo City in Buffalo, New York
along the Buffalo river.
In Silo City, just to let you know about the site itself,
it's the only place on the planet
that you can actually go and see every single method
of concrete construction used to construct grain elevators.
The owner of Silo City had a problem.
He wanted to redevelop one of his buildings.
The owner being Rick Smith.
He owns a metal fabrication company next door to the site.
So this was his problem. He had a 6 foot tall beehive
in one of the boarded up windows in this office building that he owned.
He called an exterminator and the exterminator said,
"No I can't touch this.
I can't touch this. These are honey bees.
It's not something that I can do.
You have to call a bee keeper."
So he's talking to bee keepers.
They said "Yeah we can help you with this.
But we need somewhere to put it."
So over a few beers, I'm sure,
with some faculty from the University of Buffalo
School of Architecture and planning.
Which for the rest of my talk I'm just going to call it UB.
They developed this idea of having student architects come in, pitch ideas.
With the potential of building whatever is selected to move the bees into.
So what ended up happening is Rick came to the school
and he said, "I want two things.
One something to house the bees in
and two I need something that will symbolize regeneration of Silo City."
So all his students showed up.
There were about 40 students. Both undergrad and graduate students.
Over 10 ideas were pitched.
And through this very, very rigorous process,
through an entire semester,
my design with 4 other students was selected.
So our design basically takes inspiration
from the grain elevators that surround this.
So when you're standing in a silo
there's literally nowhere to look but straight up.
So we wanted to emulate that.
It worked out well then for housing the bees.
Because then that puts them up above you, above the visitor,
out of harms way from you.
But also from other natural predators that are around there.
So what you can see in this drawing
is this is where the bees are actually housed in our bee cab.
And that can actually raise and lower.
So in the up position is where a visitor would come
and actually witness and see the bees.
And then you can lower it for a bee keeper to actually access it and
hopefully then an educational group to come
and actually see the bees up close.
Now when I say we, it's not just me that designed and built this.
Myself, Dan Nead, Kyle Mastalinski, Scott Selin and Lisa Stern.
We finished this in our last semester while graduate students at UB.
We'd really liked to stress that we did not get school credit for this.
(Laughter)
It was all on the side and we definitely did not get paid.
This was strictly for the opportunity to build something down at the site.
We built this at the school's Material and Method Shop.
We have an excellent shop there.
So we fabricated everything ourselves.
We did work with Rigidized Metals.
Which is a company that Rick owns right next door to Silo City.
Since they were the project sponsor for this
we figured it would be wise to actually use their material in our design.
It's an opportunity for them so showcase
how their materials can be used in new and innovative ways.
So this is the tower standup
before we clad it and while Kyle is cladding it.
And so we worked with Rigidized to actually develop the panels
that actually go around it both for structure
and to make sure that it actually performed the way that we wanted it to
for both solar shading and for solar gain.
So once it was up we had a bee keeper come in.
He removed all the bees from their window.
And then placed them in the tower.
I'd like to stress that he literally just placed the bees in the bee "cab".
He didn't move any honey comb.
They were just kind of left there to their own devices.
It was a stressful first week.
We didn't know if they were actually going to take to it.
We couldn't know 100%.
We worked with beekeepers throughout the design process,
but no one could be sure.
After the first week they did end up starting to build honeycombs.
And they took to it.
It was a win on our book that this actually happened.
So that was our goal.
We wanted to build something that bees would live in.
That was the task.
But what ended up happening is that we started getting all this interest.
On the left is a city map of what kind of impact the project had.
It actually continues the pollination
of a local nature preserve, community gardens.
And on the right is a world map of the number of hits
that we received on our website after the first 6 months.
So we started plugging the project
and we tossed it out to a few different websites.
And after the first, well actually to date
we've had hits on our website from 88 different countries.
And we've also had inquiries from Australia as to,
How did you make this? How are you maintaining this?
We want to have that similar management strategy for our communities.
We've had developers from the Pacific Northwest saying,
"We want to work with you to put one of these
into our development that we're building."
We've had visitors from all over the globe come here.
Scott was down just working at the site one day
and he saw this car come in and said -
You know they looked a little out of place.
So he approached them and said, "What are you doing here?
Technically it's private property."
They said, "Oh we drove down here from Montreal to see the beehive."
He said, "OK, let me see show it to you.
What else are you guys doing while you are in Buffalo?"
They said "No, no, we're here to see the beehive
and then we're leaving." (Laughter)
So he managed to convince them to stay the night and see some other stuff.
(Laughter)
I mean that's the impact,
is they drove with just a day trip in mind to see this.
So a professor then said, "You're getting a lot of traction on this.
You should start submitting it to design competitions."
So to date we've won outright
three out of four International design competitions.
And we were finalists in the 4th.
We've been published in a variety of newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs.
Not just for architecture and design and for urban planning
but also for bee hobbyist websites
and ecology websites.
So it's really this huge impact and a lot of traction.
That again all we wanted to do was make something
that was different than a typical beebox that a beekeeper would keep.
But we just wanted to make something that bees would live in.
But our second goal was the design facility educational program.
So we have had tons of field trips from the Buffalo public schools,
from the local nature preserves, state Tifft Nature Preserves
and from other after school programs.
And it's worked out for Rigidized very well.
They've had numerous inquiries
trying to test and further push their product.
So there have been projects since
that have actually removed structure from their product
and their product itself then becomes the structure.
But most importantly in my book,
is that parents bring their kids to the site to show them the beehive.
Or kids ask their parents to come down.
But what ends up happening is that then the parents,
in addition to the kids
start asking questions about the site as a whole.
So there's this misconception that maybe this whole site
should just be torn down.
We don't need grain elevators anymore for their original purpose.
So the parents come down and then
they start asking question about the site.
They want to know, What does a grain elevator do?
What are you doing now with them?
How can we actually reuse them?
And so that achieves Rick's goal
of getting more people down to Silo City
and understanding the site.
So back to our smallest of clients, all the honeybees.
So this is a photo of move-in day or move-in week
when they were swarming around the hive.
We are extremely proud to say that they did take to it
and they didn't try to go elsewhere.
But they did end up building honeycombs in the bee cab and in Elevator B.
So we are continuing to work on a management strategy
for the continued success of this project.
But this photo was taken after
six months of occupation in the beehive.
So again we basically placed the bees into the bee cab
and then they took to it right away.
So what we really end up hoping continues to happen with this project
in that what we hope to prove
that regardless of the size of your design
or the size of your footprint
that it really can make a difference
and that regardless of how small it is
it really can make a difference in the community,
to your client, to the designers and for your visitors.
Thank you.
(Applause)