In my Geometry and Manufacturing course, we were introduced to M.C. Escher’s transforming tesselations. I decided to explore this further and generated various tiles and tesselations using OnShape.
First Tile, Planar Relations:
The first tile sketch is meant to look like overlapping perpendicular planes.
This tiling design is inspired by “Leonardo’s Cross”, one of DaVinci’s many curiousity explorations. The cross references a bubble optics lighting phenomenon that was theorized and sketched by DaVinci in his personal notebooks.
This tile is used as the base for the following patterns.
Symmetry and movement can be mesmerizing. It’s hard to draw the line between different shapes at times.
A pattern created using circular patterns around central axes.
Further exploration into how the external portions of the new tile can interact with one another, demonstrating different forms of six-fold symmetry.
Third Tile: Wave
The spiral design of this tile evoked oceanic imagery in the tessellations.
Shells
Two unique tiles, the first made from the initial sketch and the second from rotating the first part about a central axis.
Ripples
Fourth Tile: Leonardo’s Cross
By animating two overlapping tesselations, we can observe how new patterns emerge. What do you see?
Second Tile: Asymmetry
A slight modification of the first tile that has rotational rather than linear symmetry.
A new type of tile made by removing the larger outer segments.
I then added two triangles to make the tile perfectly tesselate.