Overview
Gone are the days of crashing on your own filthy camp stretcher at Splendour, padlocking up every tenty inch at Falls or nursing a crick floor-torn neck at Meredith. Belgian music festivals have changed the festival accommodation game with this brand new pop-up hotel design, so you'll never want to take the townbound shuttle again.
Structured around a Japanese-style capsule hotel design, the prototype pods have been popping up at Belgian music festivals of late, prompting winsome looks from poor ol' regular stuck-in-the-mud campers. Adorably dubbed B-and-Bee, the design is the winner of a recent competition in Belgium that sought out sustainable entrepreneurship bright ideas.
Often also the case at Australian festivals, Belgian festival campers aren't the most environmentally friendly of guests; leaving their cheap tents in a heap post-festival for someone else to deal with. The B-and-Bee team, led by Diana Schneider, Raf Schoors, Tim Ruytjens and social entrepreneurs at Compaan and Labeur, wanted to combat this regular trashing of resources. "It’s an ecological nightmare," Schneider told Wired. "We wanted to provide a sustainable sleeping option."
The B-and-Bee honeycomb structure kicks a few goals, both sustainably and as a space-saving device. Attempting to reduce the spatial footprint, maintain cushiness and privacy while accommodating as many festivalgoers as possible is no mean feat. Using a stacked, tesselated design was the key. "We were looking for the most effective way to stack cells so they strengthen each other," says Schneider. "If you stack a square on top of each other the structure won't strengthen itself, whereas if you stack hexagons, they fit into each other and stabilise the structure."
Slipping into a tiny, capsule space might sound a tad claustrophobic for some campers, but the B-and-Bee pods actually measure 1.7 metres wide by 1.45 metres tall, with a king-sized bed that's able to transform into a seat. You've also got power in your pod to charge that receptionless phone of yours, along with a light — camping's most underrated ally.
While the combs are still in prototype phase, the team are hoping to have the structures geared up for next year's northern hemisphere summer festival season. Fingers crossed for a southern export, these little hives would go down a treat with yoga mat-weary Australian festivalgoers.
Via Wired.