Patterns on walls

This lesson asks you to identify and describe different patterns made of geometric designs, including patterns you can find in real places. The museum offers one short record on geometric patterns in buildings, the girih; the photographs, the describing and the rest of the patterns your class brings. ¹

Look at a pattern and find the smallest part that repeats. Say what changes and what stays the same each time it comes back.

Patterns are not only on walls. Look for one on a floor, a fabric or a fence near you, and describe it in words a friend could use to draw it.

Imagine a long wall covered with stars and many-sided shapes. The museum's record says that girih patterns build stars and polygons from interlacing lines, that they were common in Safavid and Seljuk buildings, and that they rest on girih tiles ². A second record says that Islamic geometric patterns are repeated patterns of stars, polygons and grids that cover the surfaces of buildings and art from al-Andalus to Central Asia ². The two records do not say who designed them.

Find a star in a girih pattern. Which would help a friend draw the pattern better: naming its shapes, or telling where it repeats, and why?

• Girih: how stars and polygons are built from interlacing lines.
• Islamic geometric patterns: repeated patterns of stars, polygons and grids, from al-Andalus to Central Asia.

Read the record on girih. Draw a star or a polygon you can find in a girih pattern, and then draw the next two shapes in its row.