I have been studying and making mechanisms and surfaces based on tessellation since I took an art-science collaboration class taught by Tomohiro Tachi (professor of computational origami) and Asao Tokolo (artist). The presented mechanisms draw inspiration from the Tokyo 2020 emblems and their variations designed by Tokolo and his collaborators. I found and studied their kinematic properties with Tachi.
When I make works with 3D printing, I consider simplicity, efficiency, and reproducibility so that the model and accompanying experiences are easy to share. In these works, I divided the entire mechanisms into fewer types of modules with printable shapes without support material, and then assembled them.
This work was inspired by TMK120 and TMK122, the spherical Tokyo 2020 emblem and its figure-ground inversion, proposed by Asao Tokolo and Tomoki Hiramoto.
Tachi and I found that the original planar emblem based on rhombic tiling forms a mechanism when we invert the figure and ground. When we extended this theory to curved surfaces, we found that the edges of the base rhombi must align with curvature lines, which are orthogonal in generic cases, forcing rhombi into squares. However, spheres can allow for non-orthogonal rhombic grids of curvature lines. We applied this concept to a spherical tiling of 120 rhombi and achieved a kinematic TMK122.
4 types of tiles (PLA) and 4 types of hinges (TPU) were 3D-printed separately and assembled.
This work was inspired by the Tokyo 2020 emblem by Tokolo, composed of rectangles connecting the midpoints of a base rhombic tiling. Tachi and I found that the inversion of the figure and ground of the pattern (regarding the rectangles as holes) forms a mechanism.
Though its aperiodicity allows for pattern variation, production seemed challenging due to the diverse shapes of tiles. We solved this by regarding a rhombus with holes containing hinges as a module.
This work uses two types of rhombi for Penrose tiling. The tiles of purely extruded shapes are 3D-printed with TPU. They are joined through jigsaw-shaped edges, enabling repeated assembly for making various patterns. We can see the pattern change while squeezing the mechanism.
