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DIGITAL GROTESQUE
STEALTH ECOLOGY

Personal Project

Undergraduate Yr 3 Project,

Bartlett School of Architecture

Situated above the present entrance to Tottenham Court Road Station, this scheme proposes a DNA Data Centre that will use liquid honey as a data-storage medium, thereby merging the natural honey-making process of bees with innovative methods of obtaining environmental information. 

S.E. McGregor, Apiculturist

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live."

Honey contains crucial ecological data about the floral ratio of the ecosystem at any given time; the collection of this data will inform future land preservation and reclamation strategies in light of the prediction that central London will be completely flooded by the year 2100 due to climate change. Workers at this data-collection centre will form a symbiotic relationship with the bees to document and combat the changing ecosystem. Over time, the digitally differentiated surfaces of the bee-inhabitable columns on the building’s façade will create an inhabitable site for bees, whereas beneath in the drowned world, corals will flourish. 

The excess honey produced by bees will also be used as a construction material to create a vividly coloured honey-crystal tower.For the period up until London floods, the project will function as three separate buildings around this urban corner site: a carbon-capturing facility, a tube station and community apiary, and the DNA Data Centre.

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