Floor Star. I've always liked the Wurster floor--that scuffed brown linoleum, kept to a high polish, as if we'd joined the military or were going to church. Joe Esherick chose it, no doubt--at least that would be my guess. Dutiful, robust--ready for adventure. And always in the background--unassertive in itself--making no claims on our stylistic attentions. Solid, pleasant, uninflected--just there when you need it--and yet, with a certain warmth that would be hard to explain. (A warm floor?) An important warmth in an otherwise trying environment, with due dates and competitions, the unrelenting emphasis on the practical--getting things done being always a given.
Makes me think of the day, when I was still in school here in the Architecture program, in the first year of Option 3. That would have been 1967-68, and a professional emphasis reigned supreme. Not that many of us understood what this meant, particularly--a set of codes--how you dressed, how you stood, the pinky finger in the air when you pointed to a project drawing on review. (Where does one learn to do this?) And yet the energy outside was 1967 all around--a grand contradiction. (Tear gas in Sproul Plaza would follow). I was mystified. The courses presented things I very much enjoyed--and I learned to use the shop (that beast of industry, the Northfield table saw)--but the severity of the then design channels wasn't right, so I began to look around. A poster on a wall somewhere on campus--the Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Exchange Fellowship in Warsaw--and soon enough, I was walking out the door of a required undergrad engineering course (slide rules and pocket protectors) and down to Dwinelle, where in a dusty classroom a group of odd and unusual types--each of their postures unique, and thereby appealing--were learning a new language... Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła...
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