Quote of the Day - 2/5/2012

Flagstone floors can present us with a…picture of harmony between contrary forces. There are floors in which large, obtuse stones have been persuaded by a mason to take their place within a methodical grid. One senses how the excesses in the character of these stones was tempered, how they were educated out of savagery still evident in the craggy cliff-faces from which they were heaved….we can appreciate order without danger of boredom and vigor without the shadow of anarchy. - Alain de Botton in The Architecture of Happiness (Vintage)

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There was a flagstone floor in the central hallway of the oldest building where I went to college. I always felt that the floor had more panache than the whole rest of the building. The irregularity of the cut edges of the stones and the slight unevenness of their surface always caught my attention as I made my way to class. The cleaning crew must have spent a lot of time on that area too because it was always spotless. It seemed that the floor would last longer the building - like it was on a different time scale than the cinder block, linoleum, and sheet rock. When I found the quote above, I realized that that floor was one of my most vivid memories of the architecture of the school. Perhaps the ‘order without danger of boredom and vigor without the shadow of anarchy’ of that flagstone floor is what made it so.