Arts & Culture

A Hankering for Hexagons

Hexagons are pretty awesome, you've gotta admit. Bees have certainly made fantastic use of them. But what about us humans? Here, Ben explores the pros and cons of using hexagons in architectural design.

At some point during the evolution of life here on Earth, honey bees had a really good idea. The started to build honeycombs in the shape of a hexagon. There is so much that is fascinating about this, and Robert Krulwich of NPR has a terrific blogpost on the topic. To sum up how remarkable it is that bees utilize a hexagon, consider how exhaustive it is on the bee’s part to make wax, essentially the mortar that holds their hive together. An individual worker bee produces a mere 1/12 teaspoon of honey over the course of its lifetime, which is typically less than 2 months. An entire hive needs to consume 6-8 pounds of honey in order to produce 1 pound of wax. This translates to bees in a hive collectively traversing the entire world 6 times! Which makes me feel a tinge of guilt about the lob of honey I dropped into that cup of tea I had the other day.

In any case, bees utilize the hexagon because it is mathematically the most efficient shape to enclose space. Well, that isn’t exactly true – circles enclose more space in say, a room. But, an array of circles positioned together equate to a lot of wasted space between the circles. I made a quick sketch to illustrate:

Notice how there is absolutely no wasted space (quick sketch, but you get the idea) in the hexagon pattern. The fact that bees figured this out is one of those amazing facts of the natural world that keep me in utter awe of it.

Why is it then that architects avoid this amazing shape when it comes to the design of the human built environment? The main reason is that most furniture is designed to fit in the shape of a rectangular room – tables, beds, almost anything really. You can have some pretty awkward furniture arrangement in a hexagonal shaped room. This is why, for example, when Frank Lloyd Wright (more on him in a minute) played with geometric shapes in his designs (including the hexagon!) he was keen on designing custom built-in furniture to go along with the shape of the space. Unfortunately, custom furniture is more expensive, so it’s economical to design for what is more widely available and therefore more affordable to clients.

That said, there are other issues with hexagons – they are an incredibly distinctive shape. An equilateral hexagon is so prominent that you can’t really ignore its existence in a space. I once stayed at a resort for my Aunt's wedding in Bloomington, IL - it was designed entirely of hexagons.

While I appreciate what the architect was attempting to do, the end result felt rather extreme and rigid. You feel like you are literally beaten over the head with infinite hexagons. Sometimes we designers like to make more subtle choices.

Further, fitting hexagons together forces you to maintain a consistent shape and size of a room. The beauty of a pure form hexagon is there are no acute angles at wall intersections, but if you start to subdivide a room in such a way, it becomes difficult to maintain a functional space. See below:

Also, circulation can become an issue with a circuitous route that puts a building occupant in the position of having to take a very indirect path of travel. This can be cumbersome from a wayfinding perspective, or even perilous in the case of an emergency if you can't see where you need to exit.

Hexagons have an additional benefit as well – acoustics! As it turns out, 90° (right) angles like you find on rectangles reflect sound back toward the source. In other words, they echo, especially in large spaces. Not so with hexagons, which have a natural inclination to avoid this problem. In fact, the 120° angle of a hexagon still reflects sound but disperses it. Given the right balance of elements, this actually can amplify sound and improve the sound quality. If you ever get the chance to visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s desert compound, Taliesin West you will tour the famous Cabaret Theater, which is a venerable subterranean wonderland of hex magic.

You’ll notice there is not a single right angle in the entire space – it’s all hexagonal, even the built in seating is at an angle to the stage. The stage by the way is hollow underneath so it acts like a drum and sound is amplified into this narrow space essentially made out of concrete. Normally, based on those conditions, this room should have terrible acoustics. But, Wright knew how to pull it off – employ the power of the hex. It goes without saying the acoustics are damn near perfect.

All that said, Board & Vellum is working on the design of a new School of Rock, which is a music training program for kids using a performance based approach. Some of the challenges that we faced were ensuring that acoustic isolation in the suite would be maintained and not spill out to the adjacent tenants of the building. Seeing how kids would be tearing it up on the drums or practicing any number of guitar riffs on a regular basis, it was imperative to work on a successful acoustic solution. It was also the perfect opportunity to play with hexagons since there wouldn't be a lot of furniture and instead focus on musical instruments. Below are two options proposed for the new space:

While both options feature hexagonal room shapes, we also worked on grouping spaces together that share similar acoustic requirements. The drum studio and rehearsal rooms are the loudest, so they are arranged at plan south where the adjacent space is a parking garage (and not say an adjacent retail space or office). Lesson rooms require acoustic reinforcement but to a lesser degree and so they can be adjacent to neighboring tenant. We also wanted to retain existing walls where we could to cut down on costs, so the restrooms and staff areas will get nothing more than a minor face-lift.

While the client was pleased with both of these options we ended up going with the more simplified Option 2, with some variation. There is still a lot of opportunity here to create interesting moments in our design that are both fun for the kids and functional as a place to discover the power of creating music. We’re really excited about fleshing out the design further, and it’s been fun to take on the challenge of hexagonal space making in the process and create like the bees – a functional design that is really efficient in its use of space.

One Postnote: check out how the Belgians are using hexagons for portable sleepers. These were initially designed for music festivals, but are also being looked at as temporary homeless shelters in some cities.