Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that's covered with tiny squares? It's the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a "periodic tiling of space", with shapes covering an ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to tile a bathroom floor, square tiles are the simplest option—they fit together without any gaps in a grid pattern that can ...

Nature is full of patterns. Among them are tiling patterns, which mimic what you'd see on a tiled bathroom floor, characterized by both tiles and interfaces—such as grout—in between. In nature, a ...

Medieval Islamic designers used elaborate geometrical tiling patterns at least 500 years before Western mathematicians developed the concept. The geometric design, called “girih”, was widely used to ...

We love monochromatic subway tile as much as the next person; it's classic for a reason. But lately designers are arranging tiles in unexpected patterns to pack a stronger visual punch. There's plenty ...