Penrose tiling is very reminiscent of “girih” – the elaborate patterns used in Islamic architecture. While travelling in Uzbekistan, Lu noticed motifs with 10-fold rotational symmetry, which is a hallmark of some Penrose tiling. This inspired him to search through thousands of photographs of Islamic patterns to try to find a quasi-crystalline pattern – and this led him to a wall of the Darb-i Imam shrine in Iran, built in 1453.
Although Lu describes the Darb-i Imam pattern as a “nearly-perfect” Penrose tiling, he told Physics Web that the defects could be removed by “flipping a few tiles”. He believes that the pattern’s designer had perfection in mind, but the pattern may have been distorted during construction or repair.
(Source: physicsworld.com)
