#escher

Escher tilings, inspired by the work of Dutch artist M.C. Escher, are inspiring tessellations that cover a plane using repeated geometric shapes without gaps or overlaps. He often used interlocking, recognizable figures like animals and birds to create these patterns, blending art with mathematical precision. His tilings explore symmetry, transformations, and the interplay between two- and three-dimensional space. Escher’s work has influenced both artistic and mathematical fields, particularly in the study of tessellations and geometry. Thus, In this short tutorial,…

Here is one of the exercises I tested with a few students in Architectural Geometry. The exercise is about creating Escher-like patterns. It is an introductory topic on the designerly utilization of regular tessellations. We use square, hexagonal, or triangular tessellations as underlying structures of complex patterns. Below are some of the student works from this exercise. I think the black-and-white coloring helps in terms of reducing the requirements. Although the patterns designed in this exercise are not Escher patterns,…

After Puzzling, I tried to establish more of Escher’s basic grid transformations using Grasshopper’s native components. This definition simulates Escher’s transformation of four-cornered grids. The postulate is based on the fact that every quadrilateral (or triangular) planar shape can create regular tessellations without gaps or overlaps. In the traditional method, this tessellation is achieved by rotating the shape 180 degrees and copying afterward. However, in Grasshopper we simply define the fifth point for each shape and divide subsurfaces into four…