A world without parallel lines
What would life be like if there were no parallel lines? Think about it? What would we gain? or lose?
Office with parallel lines
Think about a stereotypical office. Cubicles are stacked tightly next to one another to create an organized grid. Could this structured and well-packed environment exist without parallel lines?
Office without parallel lines
How would offices change without parallel lines? To answer this question, I tried to sketch an office without parallel lines. To sketch this office, i drew inspiration from various places.
Modern office
First and foremost, I tried to draw inspiration from modern offices. Many modern offices incorporate curved, and circular geometrical objects into the environment. Doesn't it feel so much more laid-back, and homely compared to the stereotypical office? My drawing mainly drew inspiration from modern offices for internal furnishing, however, as window panes and a multi-floored office building neccessarily contains parallel lines, I decided to find another source of inspiration for the physical structure of the office.
Yurt office
I turned to the Mongolian Yurt (or Ger) for inspiration to draw the physical structure of my office without parallel lines. However, while the physical structure of the Yurt does not contain parallel lines, its frames are often built by weaving lattices of parallel wood or bamboo strips together.
| Mogolian Yurt | Yurt frame |
|---|---|
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The woven lattice was, however, not essential to the building of the Yurt structure. This is demonstrated by the Yurt-inspired tent displayed below. Hence, the Yurt structure was chosen to be the physical structure of my office without parallel lines.
Tables and Chairs
The table for my office was modelled after regular hardwood tables, but cut in a way that it does not contain any parallel lines.
The chairs for my office are modelled after red-blood cell shaped bean-bags.
Laptop
The laptop that I drew was inspired by the circular screen displays found on modern smart watches. While it does not contain any parallel lines on a macroscopic level, it contains a pixel display that is tiled with square pixels
- in other words, tons of parallel lines.
| Smart watch | Pixels |
|---|---|
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I struggled to find a possible way to use pixels that do not contain any form of parallel lines. However, even when the pixels themselves are not parallel, the way they tile is often periodic in nature and contains parallel sub-tilings.
Professor Stamps introduced me to Penrose tilings, which makes it possible for the circular watch face to be made out of pixels that do not contain parallel elements in any way.
Conclusion
While working on this assignment, I was intrigued by the disparity between the occurences of parallel lines in nature, and in the man-made environment; while parallel lines are extremely rare in nature, they pervade the man-made environment.
I found it amusing that conceptualizing a world without parallel lines was extremely difficult, even when parallel lines are relatively absent throughout nature.
Having completed this assignment, I have gained a deeper appreciation of the role that geometrical elements play in daily life. Look around you, how do the geometrical elements around you affect your mood, and how you live?