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150 STRUCTURE AS ARCHITECTUREcolumns and lintel that frame an exterior entrance, clearly express theirclassical origins. Inside the building, concrete mushroom columns areexposed in several spaces. They evoke images of the flat-slab columnsthat were introduced in the early 1900s, and in particular, thosecolumns that support the roof of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s JohnsonWax administration building, Racine, Wisconsin.Rather than drawing upon historical sources to inform the detailing ofthe Beehive, Culver City, California, the architect explores ideas of ‘balancedunbalance’. 12 At ground floor the structural form is as unusual asthe structural detailing above. Four square hollow-section posts thatappear to be haphazardly orientated in plan and section lean outwardsand are wrapped around horizontally by regularly spaced steel pipesthat generate the curved form akin to an inverted beehive (Fig. 7.37). Atfirst floor one encounters most unconventional structural detailing.The two rear posts kink as in a knee-joint, but the detailing suggeststhat the structure has snapped in bending. The rotation at each joint isexpressed graphically by a triangular ‘crack’ or gap between the upperand lower sections of the posts (Fig. 7.38). Notions of instability,fragility and damage are conjured up in one’s mind. Only upon closerinspection one sees how welded steel plates within the hollow sectionsprovide enough strength for structural safety.▲ 7.37 The Beehive, Culver City, USA,Eric Owen Moss Architects, 2001. Theexterior with the main entrance to the left.▲ 7.38level.A ‘broken’ post at first-floor