When people think about bees, they mostly think about honey, said Charling Chen, a 2013 architecture graduate in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. But plants rely heavily on bees for pollination, which makes them crucial to both food production and biodiversity.
Last fall, Chen and three other Sam Fox School students juniors Shannon Slade and Anna Villanyi and master’s candidate Bingbin Zhou were among 28 from around the world selected for PAUSE, or Pollinators/Art/Urban Agriculture/Society/and the Environment.
The one-year, $200,000 project represents a partnership between the St. Louis Zoo WildCare Institute, the National Museums of Kenya and Tohono Chul Park in Tucson, Ariz. Working in teams of eight to 10, participants met with gardeners, scientists and other experts to create pollinator habitats in St. Louis, Tucson and Nairobi.