The installation's LED lights flicker and pulse in correlation with the electrical signals emitted by a real honeybee colony housed elsewhere in the gardens.
The structure contains over 1,000 individual LED lights, synchronized with a multichannel soundscape composed of cello, violin, and human vocals.
The aluminum components were engineered to be lightweight, totaling approximately 40 tonnes in weight despite their towering height.
The soundscape playing inside The Hive is a live, real-time feed that changes based on the activity levels of the bees, meaning the experience is never identical.
The design is inspired by the mathematical structure of a honeycomb, utilizing biomimetic geometry to bridge the gap between human experience and insect ecology.
The Hive is a 17-meter-tall multisensory art installation located within the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, designed to simulate the life of honeybees. It consists of 169,300 aluminum components connected by 1,000 LED lights that glow in response to real-time vibrations from a living beehive. The structure is open-latticed, allowing visitors to walk inside and immerse themselves in the visual and auditory data stream of bee activity. Wolfgang Buttress created the piece, which was originally the UK pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo before being relocated to its current site in 2016. The structure's intensity of light and sound shifts dynamically based on the current health and movement of the bees in Kew’s research hives.
Stand at the base looking upward into the center of the lattice to capture the complex, geometric ceiling patterns against the sky.
Visit on a sunny day when bees are most active, as this directly influences the intensity of the light and sound performance.
Spend time sitting on the inner floor area to let the immersive soundscape affect your auditory senses.
Check the Kew Gardens website for any temporary maintenance closures of the structure before travelling.
Do not attempt to climb or lean on the structural latticework of the installation.
