Urban Greenhouse Challenge Bumblebee Nest Food Hub

PROJECT RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

The Bumblebee Nest Food Hub is a place designed to be the food sovereignty center of the Ward 7 community in Washington D. C. where we fight food apartheid using biomimetic designs to assemble education, collective memory and circular agri-food systems operating both as an ecosystem and a cooperative society. The Nest mimics the place that the native critically endangered Rusty Patched Bumblebee calls home; where it produces its food for winter and takes care of the young and the elderly. 

Based on its social organization, we built the three pillars of The Bumblebee Nest: The Queen, The Feeders and The Pollinators. The Queen of The Hive: laying the eggs and seeds for the future Education and Cultural Memory: This pillar is focused on keeping the community together and looking towards the future. In order to fight racial and gender injustice special attention is going to be put children and female headed households, education will boost their capabilities and leisure time. 

Our aim is to generate a massive transgenerational conversation about African American heritage, art and the bio-sciences. The Queen is expected to interact with more than 1500 people a month. Social fabric is going to grow and flourish symbiotically with the okra, the black-eyed pea and the benne crops. The Feeders of the Hive: producing, distributing and storing food for the community Circular Agri-food Systems. The Nest will produce, transform and store food so at least 2000 people from the ward can get healthy food monthly. This is going to allow us to generate circular economies that impact the lives of black farmers, entrepreneurs and chefs of the community, especially single headed women. The Pollinators: symbiosis with the landscape dwelling the ecosystem through biomimicry. 

The Nest will operate as lichen in which rainwater, energy, food and residues are collected, stored, processed and recirculated adjusting itself seasonally. A multispecies symbiosis will create a microecosystem in The Bumblebee Nest becoming part of the Anacostia River basin ecological connectivity. Furthermore, our aim is to become a hotspot for the regional conservation of this bee species through its reproduction and research.

I participated in the research and concept development, and as a Biodesign-Biomimicry expert, architecture and biology consultant. The team was part of the top 10 semifinalists team in the Urban Greenhouse Challenge #3 in the Natherlands with the project 'Bumblebee Nest Food Hub'. This project was developed in collaboration with: Freddy Zapata (Design Department), Antonia Roda (Anthropologist), Mateo Villegas (Biologist Anthropologist), Daniel Avendaño (Mechanical engineer), Camilo Ayala (Environmental engineer), Maria Jose Sanchez (Architect), Josue Ramos (Economist).