Airstrip for Pollinators and Hexa-Seats is an urban garden which was installed at Tarja Halonen Park in summer 2013. The garden serves as a feast for insects harvesting nectar and pollen and delights the park visitor’s eye. Selected flowers, mostly endemic to Finland, care for pollinators’ and humans’ well-being and bloom all summer long.

The installation has been created by Christina Stadlbauer & Ulla Taipale, the initiators of Melliferopolis project. The park is located in the close vicinity of Villa Eläintarha residency.

Melliferopolis – Honeybees in Urban Environments

The Melliferopolis project has a broad and diverse approach, combining disciplines such as life sciences, architecture, engineering, visual arts, gardening, apiculture, literature, sound, crafts, and more, inviting local and global agents with or without experience in beekeeping to collaborate. The project appreciates the intrinsic value of honeybees and other insects, reaching beyond the reductionist view of bees as ecosystem service providers and honey-producers. It experiments with new ways of understanding bees, beekeeping and other urban ecosystems of insects. Collaboration is invited on many levels, human and non-human, being a crucial aspect of the project.

The Melliferopolis project was launched within the framework of Biofilia – Base for Biological Arts at Aalto University in 2012. It was initiated by Austrian artist, researcher and urban beekeeper Christina Stadlbauer. Stadlbauer and independent curator and artist Ulla Taipale began the project in Espoo and Helsinki, with the idea of bringing bees into the urban context through public, experimental apiaries; leading workshops mixing theoretical and practice-based research, hands-on activities and other cultural and academic knowledge related to Apis mellifera, the European honeybee. In 2016, a summer-long series of events Melliferopolis Fest was organised in Helsinki, inviting several artists to respond to and collaborate with the hives based in and around the city.

Over the years of its existence, an international community around Melliferopolis has grown and the activities have expanded from Helsinki to other parts of the world. The common ground is the bee and the multiple investigations and intrigue into her life and the mysteries of the hive, offering a true anti-disciplinary playground for curious minds.

HIAP has been supporting the development of the Melliferopolis project since the beginning of year 2019.

More information about the project and other supporters & partners can be found at https://melliferopolis.net/about.