Our lives — and planet Earth as a whole — would be very different if solitary bees didn’t exist. They’re vital for flowers, trees, animals and people. In fact, a third of what we eat depends on these busy, buzzing insects and other pollinators.

But, because of human impact, bees are in danger of going extinct. We’ve unwittingly destroyed their homes and natural habitats when building our own homes, gardens and cities. And we’ve turned to pesticides, chemicals and monoculture in farming, causing wildflower meadows to rapidly vanish across the planet.

That’s why we at SPACE10 want to make it easy for anyone anywhere to design a beautiful home for these vital species. Bee Home is an open invitation for everyone to give bees the home they deserve — and to make sure that planet Earth thrives.

Bee Home explores how an open-source approach can improve the way we design, fabricate and distribute physical products. At SPACE10 we believe in a future where anyone anywhere feels empowered to design, customise and fabricate their own sustainable products locally.

For more information and a visual reference, please visit beehome.design. For in-depth information, please take a look at the Bee Home Assembly & Maintenance Guide.

Consult the Readme.pdf document for more information.

To download the drawings and manual, press the green "Clone or download" button in the top right.

Bee Home is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which means that the design can be shared, copied and build upon without asking permission. The only condition is that you credit the original work to SPACE10, Bakken&Bæck and designer Tanita Klein, throw in a link and indicate if any changes have been made. Good luck!

Project owner: SPACE10

Bee Home design: Tanita Klein

Grasshopper files: ChipChop

Online parametric tool: Shapediver

Digital Interface: Bakken&Bæck

Photo: Irina Boersma