Tagged: architecture

Here we see the town of Grammichele, Sicily, built in the traditional hexagonal style. Located in the province of Catania, it was founded in 1693 after the nearby town of Occhialà was destroyed by an earthquake.

I first became aware of the Hexagonismo y Arquitectura blog earlier this week, when I saw it on a list of traffic sources to this site. At first I didn't know what to make of it, being a bit too Iberian for my linguistic competencies, but upon further inspection it seemed to be affiliated with a "Hexagonismo" movement operating out of Ibiza, more of whose work, I think, can be found at Hexperience.org. [Edit 2013-11: This site unfortunately seems defunct at this point.]

This 2001 article from the Colonial Williamsburg Journal offers a fairly eloquent exposition of certain aspects of hexagonal symbolism that are worth noting. I found the hexagons themselves fairly interesting too—particularly in contrast with the rather hexagon-poor architecture of colonial New England that I'm more familiar with. I've never been a great fan of Anglicanism, or High Church aesthetics in general, but the Puritans clearly couldn't design an interesting building if their lives depended on it—indeed, they probably would've interpreted a hexagonal cupola as a sign of idol worship or something.

Here we photo of a hexayurt built for Burning Man, assembled in a backyard somewhere north of Davis Square, and a diagram of standard hexayurt dimensions provided by the Hexayurt Project.

Several images of hexagonal geodesic dome structures at the Eden Project in Cornwall, Britain.