Friday, October 14, 2011

As a Design System

Girih Extended, Arabesque, and Seven are design systems similar to girih tiles, a medieval Islamic patterning technique. Like the original girih tiles, they facilitate the generation of complex patterns. Instead of constructing patterns line by line, we can design by tiling polygons. The systems are fast and accurate. The design below was generated in a few hours. The bottom diagram reflects the polygons that are selected from a menu and positioned edge-to-edge with another. The top and middle diagrams are generated automatically from the polygons.

These designs can be scaled from small to architectural applications. The final vector files are suitable for digital prints and processes.

Girih Extended, Arabesque, and Seven designs are reminiscent of Islamic art. The application of scaling, arabesque, and heptagon-based polygons to girih tiles shares much in common with, but extends girih pattern possibilities.



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