Research: Quasicrystals and Girih Tiles

scalable-future-cities:

Quasicrystals represent a class of solids which lack translational symmetry, but nevertheless exhibit perfect long-range order and reveal well-defined rotational symmetries, which are not necessarily consistent with periodicity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasicrystal

http://complexphotonics.org/quasicrystal.html

ALSO: Girih Tiles (found with suggestions for wikipedia

Girih tiles are a set of five tiles that were used in the creation of tiling patterns for decoration of buildings in Islamic architecture. They are known to have been used since about the year 1200 and their arrangements found significant improvement starting with the Darb-i Imam shrine in Isfahanin Iran built in 1453.

from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girih_tiles

(Submitted by John Guinn)