Urban Apiary / Palafito Arquitectura

Architects: Palafito Arquitectura
Area: 68 m²
Photographs: Simón Bosch
Lead Architect: Santiago Pradilla
Designer: Santiago Pradilla Hosie, Laura Vispe
Design Team: Santiago Pradilla, Laura Vispe, Jose López, Juan José Bacca, Juan David Daza
Project Managment: Juan José Bacca
Project Management Assistant: Juan David Daza Galindo
Promotor: Universidad el Rosario
Structure Engineers: Ingeos Consultoría S.A.S.
City: Bogotá
Country: Colombia

Urban Apiary, designed by Palafito Arquitectura, is a bamboo pavilion selected for the XII BIAU and the Colombian Biennial, enabling students and bees to share a research space. The design features an open-to-sky area for bees, with visitors protected by slender bamboo columns that create a “forest” effect. Structured around interlocking squares, the pavilion integrates bamboo and metal, using bamboo columns for verticality and metal enclosures for permeability. Researchers’ insights, including bees’ preference for white, influenced the design. The ground floor houses a bee-free laboratory within a translucent metal enclosure, while the upper level hosts open-air beehives, encouraging bees to explore nearby urban gardens.

Chosen for the XII BIAU and the Colombian Biennial, this compact bamboo structure accommodates thousands of Apis mellifera bees, fostering coexistence between bees and students. Uniquely, the bees reside inside an open-to-sky space, while humans remain outside, shielded by a slender, sculptural “forest” of bamboo columns.

The design is structured around squares of various sizes that harmonize in both plan and section, defining the corners of an efficient layout. The building relies on only two materials: bamboo, which shapes the structure into a forest-like assembly of columns, some of which hover above the ground, adding order and enhancing its strong verticality; and metal, which forms the enclosure, providing selective permeability between the interior and exterior, as well as between the building and its surroundings.

Layers of permeability are created through thresholds, varied circulation paths, and column-formed interstices. For this unique project, the design responded to insights from researchers at the university’s Faculty of Science, revealing, for instance, that bees avoid black, making white a more suitable choice for the two distinct spaces required by the program.

The first floor, designated by researchers as a laboratory space, contains a workspace housed within a translucent metal box that prevents bees from entering, establishing a solid base within the bamboo column forest. In contrast, the upper level is dedicated to the beehives and features a lightweight, similarly metallic and translucent enclosure that opens to the sky, inviting bees to venture out in search of nearby urban gardens.