Escher on the Floor

Yesterday's library had a floor inspired by M.C. Escher, which made me wonder what else was out there modeled on Escher's work (even if he was too late to be steampunk).

The fundamental mathematics that make Escher's work suitable for floors (or walls) is that they are tessellations -- interlocking shapes that fill a plane. The easiest, and most popular, seems to be the cube tessellation that we saw yesterday. I found it done in concrete, in carpet, in parquet, and in stone tile.

concrete stain by Tom Ralston Concrete

Carpet at the Morgan's Hotel in NYC. Here's a similar rug.

Parquet at the Hotel Palomar

A quick review of the Sunshine City floor in Tokyo, above, makes it easy to see how to constuct this tessellation from simple squares. You need three colors. Four squares of the lightest makes up the top of the cube, and then each side is made up of one whole square with two half squares finishing it up. It's all done on a grid, so while you might get dizzy installing it, it wouldn't be too hard.

Tomorrow: even more Escher for the home.