Escher's Tessellation - Pentagonal Tiling

Tessellation is a kind of tiling art, that one or more carefully designed geometric shapes repeat themselves to cover a flat surface, without any gap or overlap. M.C. Escher is a master of tessellation. He got the inspiration from a visit to Alhambra, where tons of magnificent ancient tiling work are preserved. He was fascinated by the patterns and the mathematical beauty behind, then devoted decades to explore possibility of tessellation art.

Pentagonal tiling is one of the tessellation topic revealed from Escher’s archived drawing drafts (Archive E133, check out the image link below). The pattern is common in traditional Egypt pavement, so it is often referred to as Cairo Pentagonal Tiling.

Magic thing about this pattern is that, it’s both pentagonal and hexagonal tessellation. If you take some time to observe it, you’ll figure out that a larger hexagon is split into a group of four equal pentagons, and pentagons from two different groups can form new hexagons.

This type of visual ambiguity is nicely highlighted by Escher, using a smart choice of color, which makes it suitable for LEGO tiles to present the visual and math beauty of this pattern. Thus I made this 32 x 35 (studs) LEGO framed art.

The black and white outlined webs reveals the two hidden hexagonal tiling pattern. The blue “negative spaces” forms the basic pentagonal tiling. It is potentially a good LEGO set since it is pleasing to look at, and logically inspiring at the same time. Please consider support this project if you would love to see it become an official set. Thank you!