The complex geometrical designs used centuries ago in Islamic art and architecture were planned with a tiling system that was not discovered in the West until five centuries later, two physicists have ...

The first such non-repeating, or aperiodic, pattern relied on a set of 20,426 different tiles. Mathematicians wanted to know if they could drive that number down. By the mid-1970s, Roger Penrose (who ...

Geometry in Western art predominantly involves space and proportion. But in other cultures, most notably Islamic, Chinese and Japanese, artistic geometry flowered most conspicuously in flat patterns, ...

For centuries, mathematicians and floor designers alike have been fascinated by the shapes that can tile a plane — in particular, those that do so without repetition. Now, a team of chemists has ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. Anyone in doubt that geometric patterns are back in vogue among designers need have looked no further than Design ...