11 May 2017

GREEN ISLAND 2017

The first HONEY BAR in New York City makes its debut in Brooklyn, in the spaces of the Industry City. It is a mobile kiosk, offering tasting experiences from local producers, innovative ways to serve honey, and a type of architecture which draws on a repeatable and versatile module, designed to be installed in various environments or cities around the world. A new concept of STREET HONEY BAR in which, from the tasting of different honeys to the most diverse gourmet couplings, nectar becomes a genuine lifestyle.

And indeed the age-old link between architecture and nature is what inspired us to come up with the first example in New York City of an ECO-DESIGN URBAN HIVE PARK: a project originating from an idea by Claudia Zanfi, art historian and botanist, in order to rethink the hive in a contemporary key, entrusting designers and artists from around the world with the task of applying creativity to an element of great importance in terms of environmental sustainability. The hive thus become an eco-design object, to be installed on rooftops or in private gardens, shaping the home of our sentinels of the environment like pieces of sculpture.

Organized as part of the New York Design Week in Brooklyn, in the spaces of the Industry City – Wanted Design District, this brand of New York creativity has been invited by GREEN ISLAND to form part of an international network designed to rethink all that which concerns the world of beekeeping. Thus, around the first Honey Bar a new concept emerges of objects used to serve honey, designed by the studio Design Group Italia; a Bee Hive Park with installations of hives created by the designers Capoco + Crozier Design; architecture inspired by hives through the stylistic details caught in the shots of the photographer Paul Clemence; bio-tastings with various kinds of low food-mile nectar, produced on the rooftops of New York and in local farms, such as Bee Raw Honey, Brooklyn Queen, and Hubbell Farms; as well as workshops dedicated to families, created by the City Growers association, an organization that deals with creating dialogue between local communities on themes such as urban agriculture and biodiversity.

GREEN ISLAND, an international project founded by Claudia Zanfi 16 years ago and dedicated to urban biodiversity through cultural initiatives, exhibition projects, awareness raising on themes of sustainability, brings to New York its own innovative vision entitled Alveari Urbani – winner of the EXPO in CITTA' 2015 award in Milan last year. Urban Bee Hives – part of an itinerary focusing on the safeguarding of bees and the valorization of the territory – is a dialog between nature, design, crafts and ecology which revolves around our sentinels of the environment and their fine nectar, and in the words of Claudia Zanfi, 'a project in which plants, men and insects may cooperate towards a vision of a new form of landscape and environment.'