Open Collections

Magic carpet : digital interpretation of traditional tessellation patterns

University of British Columbia

Contemporary architecture has failed to engage the rich culture of planar and spatial transformations of historical Muslim architecture, often relegating it to a form of naive pastiche or, at best, to the realm of historical reconstruction. In this project we make use of current digital technologies in an attempt to revisit and reinterpret, in modern terms, the geometric structure of patterns embedded in the historic Islamic architecture of Iran. The original contribution of this project lies in extending traditional two dimensional tiling patterns into a dynamic three dimensional state with the help of computational tools. The analogy to the classical Persian carpet as well as mobile character of design can also be seen as original. The notion of ‘transparency’ and ‘dynamism’ are interpreted using Autodesk’s Maya and Bentley’s Generative Components software. This report illustrates initial explorations and outlines future possibilities. In the past architects of the country were responsible for making the enclosure heaven-like while it was carpet weavers’ job to make the floor heaven-like. In this project as a symbolic approach, carpet and weaving becomes both the enclosure and the floor to define both floor and roof and symbolize the new approach through which we as architects use other disciplines and new tools such as new software to learn and shape the space and discover new vocabulary for a contemporary and local architecture for Iran.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-02-03

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4163

Architecture

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/