From the basis of beehive architecture to Mid Century Modern patterns to basic chemical building blocks of life, handsome hexagon graces us with style, functional form and predictable comfort.
Hexagon is a good lover. Snuggles up tight to all sexy six-sided friends in a consistent grid of freely but organized love. Somehow this dynamically shaped form has and exciting charm and yet lulls us into a sense of security that all angles fall into place with a predictable presence.
Nature is a true champion display of this handsome shape: water crystals, diamond crystals, basalt columns, epithelial cells in the eye, and Saturn’s north pole are all happily hexagons.
Bees carpentry skills are as brilliant as the flowers they seek for their sweet nectar. Although tiny in size, a bee’s brains mastered mathematical skills to create a home and storage capsule that humans only try to mimic in apartment living. Spaces that are closed loop and tight joints butt together to create a honeycomb masterpiece of sleeping quarters surrounded by golden honey walls. Sweet dreams, my brilliant pollinating friends.
While bees transform our world from color and beauty to ever so sweet honey in hexagons, architects and designers are borrowing the hexagon for the statement roof, floor and wall tiles, hip hexagons captured the hearts of many Mid-Century Modern designs and today continues to be a mod statement of style and attitude.
A steady building block with serious style, hexagon makes me jealous. In an analogy, picture this happy shape as a personality: six sides creating an arrogant array of puzzle pieces meant to fit perfectly together, like a glove. While I long to belong to this hip grouping of angles, at the slight sense of being locked in on all sides with other folks, I run, screaming to hide in the solitude of open space. I am the lone hexagon on the high desert plateau contemplating the sun dancing on the sagebrush.
I suspect that as a happy solitary hex, my angles are loose, so the moment community hex comes along I cave at all angles, compressing into a pile of lines, mystified at how others mesh so together. Perhaps my angles are out of joint, poking into space in a way that agitates all shapes surrounded me, bumping into a free fall.
Free falling into nothing or is it actually falling into one’s own place? Maybe this is the true nature of a solitary building block shoring up each of the six magnificent walls with individual strength and integrity, bracing the joints with trust and certainty of sustaining the weight of the world when it leans in unpredictably.
One of life's persistent questions. . . how to honeycomb well?