Building on the Wisdom of Bees

Alumni, College/University Partners, Business & Economics, Interview/Profile

Esteban Arguedas, wearing a blue t-shirt and tan shorts, stands next to his wife Marie Jesus, wearing a white and blue striped romper, who stands on the edge of a brick fire pit. Behind them is a metal and glass house designed out of hexagons.

He’s neither an architect nor a designer — but when Esteban Arguedas (Costa Rica, UWC-USA, Earlham ’15 5) learned that Airbnb’s OMG! Fund was offering $100,000 for new vacation-home rentals built on uniquely cool designs, he was confident he could develop a winner.

“That confidence comes from my educational background, one hundred percent,” he says.

Esteban had stumbled on an article about the strength of hexagonal shapes in beehives. “Bees knew way before humans that this shape was perfect,” he notes: “It uses the least amount of material to hold the most weight.” He proposed to design and build a vacation home that made use of the beehive design, on land his parents own near a 55,800-acre rainforest preserve in Pocosol, Costa Rica.

When Airbnb selected his proposal as one of 100 funding recipients around the world, Esteban and his wife, Maria Jesus, had just under a year for design and construction. “That made this a crazy year for us,” he reports. “When building something so unique, there are just many inherent challenges.”

A quality assurance engineer for a software company, Esteban worked with a local architecture company on the project. Right on schedule last year, he opened the Rainforest Beehive House, which features large hexagonal windows and hexagonal shapes throughout.

“The Beehive is carefully designed to complement nature rather than compete with it,” Esteban says. “I really hope it becomes a hub for people trying to make a change, and for people who are trying to do good.”

This profile is part of the “Graduates in Action” series from the 2024 Annual Report.