The hive mind or collective consciousness is a term introduced in 1893 by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. He writes in Division of Labour in Society, “The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.” -Emile Durkheim This idea illustrates a social body, which practices a predetermined set of ideologies, understandings, and goals together within they’re immediate faction. This idea creates a boundary or confine implementing efficiency as the means for growth and evolution within the unified whole. The collective consciousness can be seen most notably in simple societies especially those of insects, thus creating the nature of the hive mind. Every ant, termite, or honeybee of a society has a purpose, goal, understanding, and direction, working together to exist. This social, and biomimetic, ideal I believe is central to understanding the works of the pious Antoni Gaudi and inventive Buckminster fuller. Interestingly both of these figures come from very different times and places yet they wanted to create space in a way that spoke to these conditions of a collective consciousness using the beehive as a source of inspiration. By exploring four case studies ranging from small to large we can come to an understanding of how these architects utilized the honeybee in terms of order, purpose, aesthetic, structure, and social thought. Antoni Gaudi is most noted for his large extravagant works but came from much more humble beginnings. Living in the Catalan countryside as a boy, Gaudi was influenced by nature and all of her god given forms, formulating his architectural principle, nature never has straight lines, neither should architecture. The Beehive Metaphor, a book written by Juan Antonio Ramirez goes into quite a bit of detail on Gaudi’s early life and religious beliefs and links it to the fact that Gaudi was very much influenced by the honey bee, not only the social structure but also the physical structure. The First work I would like to look at which demonstrates Gaudi’s inspiration from the honeybee is the Cooperativa Obrera Mataronesa (Worker’s Cooperative at Mataro) (Image 1-2). The Cooperativa was one of Gaudi’s first built works in 1883 and although his full vision was not completed the pieces that remain hold incredible evidence linking honeybees to his biomimetic understanding of Architecture. The Cooperativa Obrera Mataronesa was commissioned by Salvador Pages, a friend of Gaudi at the time to build an industrial whitening room, two worker’s houses, a garden, and design the company banner. This project is very important because it is the first time Gaudi implemented his famous catenary arches. The catenary arch is not only important to the architectural discourse because it is a new structural system not implemented before, but it also establishes Gaudi as truly an organicist architect. The Cooperativa was an industrial building where efficiency was key to its planning and conception. For Gaudi the parabolic form for the arches made the most sense because they are derived from nature and they allowed for an open plan with high
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