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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 →
(This is the math geek part about the Sala de la Barca ceiling. For instructions on constructing the pattern with compass and straightedge, go over to Part 1.) In the process of figuring out how to draw this pattern, I ran into a lot of questions, and had to do more than a little math … Continue reading The Mathematics of 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 →
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
Each of the five pieces in this miniseries, leading up to this one, has considered a different subset of adaptive design problems for people dealing with one working hand, like I was in the wake of a serious accident. We’ve covered various solutions I researched, evaluated, and adopted along the way; some of which I
The McMansionization of the White House, or: Regional Car Dealership Rococo: a treatise | McMansion Hell
Rebuilding doesn’t have to mean sterile development. Just look at the innovative and resilient ways people are already doing it.
If you’re one of the millions of Americans struggling with your tax forms today, you’re not alone. Even Albert Einstein allegedly found income taxes to be “the hardest thing in the world to understand.” But how did our tax system become so complicated? From Revolution to Revenue: The Birth of American Taxation America’s relationship with
Do it now, while the country still has hope.
