Meet the Designer:
WineHive® was designed by John Paulick, an award-winning industrial designer in Philadelphia. John is an alumni of Philadelphia University's Industrial Design program and a certified Biomimicry Specialist from The Biomimicry Institute.
John's fascination with nature lead him to Biomimicry, and it's obvious where his fascination with honeycomb structures lead him. After watching a documentary on how bees construct their hives using minimal material with the utmost precision, John was truly inspired to create a larger honeycomb structure as a tribute to these tiny engineers.
At the time, John was designing high-end shower doors from extruded aluminum, and saw an opportunity while attending a trade show to transcend extruded aluminum from the typical bathroom applications of shower doors and vanities into the kitchen. The kitchen countertop stood out in John's mind as prime real estate, and with wine playing such an intrinsic role in most traditional cooking, a wine rack seemed like the perfect product.
At that point, John had the inspiration and application for his new product, and just needed to design it. And so he did, but now what?
John utilized the power of crowdfunding on Kickstarter to bring the WineHive to market. With an initial funding goal of $15,000 to cover tooling and first production costs, WineHive took off and raised over $65,000 in less than 30 days!
But the real magic behind WineHive is the patent-pending interlocking system. It's comprised of just a single structural element that repeats itself to form an infinite array of honeycomb structures:
The key design principle behind the honeycomb beehive is the 120-degree joint system, which disperses weight loads far more efficiently than our manmade 90-degree structures while using less material. It also creates perfectly modular hexagonal shapes that nest beautifully with one another.
Following these principles and crafting the WineHive from sturdy aluminum allowed John to utilize a very thin wall thickness for the WineHive, resulting in a very low overall material usage. Here's a look at the WineHive parts being extruded in aluminum: