The Agrün Apiary, located on a farm in central New Jersey, is both architecture and agriculture. Built on raised timber-framed platforms that reuse 18th-century Dutch stone foundations, the structures are elevated above the 50- and 100-year flood lines, providing the farm’s bee colonies with refuge from rising waters.
For the human occupants of Agrün Farm, the Apiary serves as a platform that anchors and organizes activity while maintaining an open-ended character. It is a site of indeterminacy and exchange—between species, rituals, and timescales. On this porch-like structure, the construction of the Apiary itself continues: designer-builders carve wood joints; others dry herbs and gather seeds; bees dance, defend, and orient.
The project also functions as a pedagogical apparatus. It emerges from—and gives rise to—an ongoing series of workshops on building and farming. Agrün is not built once; it is built again and again.
The Agrün Apiary Drawdel—a hybrid of drawing and model—rehearses this condition by simultaneously imagining past iterations and future configurations. Like the built project, the Drawdel resists resolution in both form and content. It operates as a record of previous versions and as a projection of future possibilities, all while reinforcing the concept of the Apiary as an active platform for learning, building, and gathering.
The Agrün Apiary, in its many forms, was designed and built by Owen Nichols, Gus Crain, Kyle Ku, Marc Mascarello, and Clara Syme.
