Forget what you know about the beehive and pick up this guide to apiaries from ancient times to the early modern world
Published with RVB.
Since the birth of the modern beehive in 1852, structural innovation in hive construction has entered a dormant period. By favoring the standardized box hive, beekeeping turns its back on the 4,400 years of architectural diversity that came before.
In an attempt to rectify this stagnation and to recover a fascinating fragment of design history, Aladin Borioli has maintained an open-ended and ongoing research project,
Apian, which uses theoretical, iconographic and ethnographic methods to dissect the relationship between bees and humans. Originally published by RVB Books in 2020, this pocket-size, bilingual (English/French) artist's book traces archival evidence of the beehive from as far back as 2400 BCE. Borioli rejects a fixed narrative and makes way for polymorphism: introducing graphic design, photography and writing to retell the story of beehives. The 375 images offer a glimpse into this prolific history of architecture for nonhumans.
Aladin Borioli (born 1988) lives and works between Bevaix, Switzerland, and London. He holds a BA in photography from the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne and an MA in visual and media anthropology from the Freie Universität Berlin. He is currently pursuing a certificate program in critical philosophy at the New Centre for Research and Practice.
