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I was flipping through Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament a couple months ago, and my eye was caught by this handsome pattern I had not noticed before. This is Jones’s Plate XLII, in the chapter on designs from the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. He calls it, “Part of the ceiling of the Portico of the … Continue reading Constructing the Pattern on the Sala de la Barca Ceiling →
Nord de Guerre Here’s a survey plat made in 1919 by a US Army unit in France. In the aftermath of WW1, teams of American military surveyors produced these as they went around France mapping the grave sites of fallen soldiers. On this plat we can see a number of bearings and distances from the … Continue reading Transforming French WW1 Lambert Coordinates to WGS84 →
This story begins one day when I was assembling a map of the city of Edmonton, Alberta from OpenStreetMap data. It was going to be a big map, a 42″ (106 cm) wide poster for a wall. The data was good, but the standard OSM colours were not. They would work fine for a street … Continue reading Cartographic palettes and colour harmonies →
Now that we know our way around the pattern (go back to Part 1), it should be fairly straightforward to construct with a compass and straightedge. But be aware: any pattern that requires you to construct a pentagon is an advanced challenge. They are trickier to make than squares or hexagons. Here’s what we want … Continue reading Constructing Bourgoin’s Figure 171 – Part 2 →
More in architecture
Architect-K has shared photos of MIGIUI, a modern cafe and various social spaces that lies within the hanok village of Ulju-gun, South Korea. The building was designed to blend seamlessly into this natural setting, and was inspired by a forest path. Major tree species, rocks, and water flows were scattered across the site to reawaken […]
Is the huge and sprawling “modern farmhouse” next?
The ghorfas (in arab غرفة [ghurfa], meaning “room”) are common granary chambers found mostly in southern Tunisia and certain areas of Libya and associated with Berber populations. In more recent times, they have also been used as dwellings. They consist of barrel-vaulted rooms measuring 4 to 5 metres in length and 2 metres in height, […]
US bridges at risk of ship collisions, Airbus testing an unducted fan, an earthquake in Myanmar, China’s undersea cable cutter, and more.
The new documentary Secret Mall Apartment is about a group of artists who built, you guessed it – a secret apartment, inside of the mall. We interviewed the group’s ringleader Michael Townsend a few years back, and after the story, we’ll have an update about what’s happened since then. Plus, mall history with Alexandra Lange.
