The Pattern Project

Patterns are everywhere. In architecture around the world, patterns are tattooed across floors, walls and ceilings. It's as if 5,000 years ago someone said, "Let's take a circle, a triangle and a square and see all the combinations we can make." They took the tendency of the mind to perceive the raw mystery of creation and draw elusive currents into lines of connection. Some marked their places with simplified grids, reducing vast possibilities to an x axis and a y axis. Others took the circle-triangle-square group and spun them into designs that confound the mind's desire to pin things down. Instead they outlined pathways of line and color that open and open beyond limits.

Into this Pattern Project, the geometers of every age wove wisdom about dwelling here now. They depicted how, up close, individual forms might appear to stand alone. When you step back, you see how each individual form grows out of and supports a network of living. They showed how different shapes and colors might appear to be in conflict. Yet, placing them together creates a dynamic dance of unexpected possibilities. The Pattern Makers displayed how the beauty of the lines are important, but it's the spaces in between that make a design come alive. They said so much more.

Look at the patterns you come across and see what the Pattern Project has to tell you. Maybe you can join in and see what you can create with a circle, triangle and square.