ABSTRACT
An ongoing fascination at Aranda\Lasch is the strange story of quasicrystals. While the mathematics culled from their recent scientific discovery is used to create the design objects seen below we remain inspired by the talk of monsters, higher dimensions, and the extraterrestrial surrounding quasicrystals over the centuries. A quasicrystal is a material structure that hovers on the edge of falling apart. Unlike a regular crystal, whose molecular pattern is periodic (or repetitive in all directions), the distinctive quality of a quasicrystal is that its structural pattern never repeats the same way twice. It is endless and uneven, but interestingly, can be described by the arrangement of a small set of modular parts. As these small units aggregate together they form larger figures that themselves combine into ever larger movements that are always a little bit different from any other part of the pattern. In short, quasicrystalline patterns have an infinite capacity to create and carry information. This is why they remain our obsession, there is no end to the stories that they can tell, the double-sided promise of the efficiency of modularity along with an endless variety of pattern constitutes a step forward, or maybe sideways, for the discipline of architecture and design. Our designs are inspired by the insight of these medieval mathematicians; the infinite is immanent in every tile or, to put it in terms of contemporary scientific thinking, the entire universe is contained within every piece of it. What remains to be pondered is why medieval Islamic tilings were aperiodic. Why was it important to create patterns that could be infinitely vast, small, or large? And why has it been so difficult to accept their existence in the West, why were they always deemed impossible? The following timeline tracks the significant chapters in the story of quasicrystals.
