Bridges 2011 Workshop Paper

When thinking about Islamic mosaics, it might seem that only mosaics that have geometrical patterns involve mathematics, however, there is an interesting amount of mathematics in floral designs too: each flower individually and all of the various connections between the flowers are based on circular patterns. In this workshop the participants will learn about these constructions step by step. Next, they will design a flower themselves, based on the fixed base shapes of the mosaics but leaving enough degrees of freedom to be creative. The newly designed flowers will be attached to a prefabricated framework to make a wonderful collaborative design.