Applied Crystallography

Biography

Biography: A. Thalal

Abstract

Throughout history there were always links between geometry and art. These links become especially evident when to the study of ornamental art, we apply the theory of symmetry. The idea to study ornaments of different cultures from the point of view of the theory of symmetry, given by G. Pólya (1924) and A. Speiser (1927), was supported by the intensive development of the theory of symmetry in the 20th century. This work is dedicated to the symmetry in the ornamental art of the western Islamic. Moorish craftsmen developed an original, rich and varied art, which integrated the geometry in the construction of complex patterns. This art which flourished in Andalusia until the 15th century and continues to develop until now in North Africa, has evolved over the centuries involving symmetry in its most general sense: harmony, order, consistency and invariance. The ornamental periodic motifs that adorn buildings which will be discussed, from the standpoint of the theory of symmetry, existed long before Fedorov (1891), showed that there are only 17 periodic tilings of the plane. In the other hand, quasiperiodic tiling discovered by D. Shechtman (1984), adorn the ancient building in the western Islamic world. The similarity between the patterns and quasicrystals, aroused the interest of several crystallographers. Some examples of quasiperiodic patterns found in several Moroccan historical building will be described in term of Penrose tiling and give new quasiperiodic patterns obtained by Aboufadil et al using the multigrid method (2014).