Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Fractals built Temples


I was researching the Indian temples of Khajuraho when I came across a scholarly article that said fractal geometry was the underlining structure for the building of these temples.  To be honest, I was surprised!  Here is a photo of one of the temples.  

4 comments:

deirdre said...

This is really cool because i think a lot of the most beautiful (and stable) architecture can be traced back to inspiration from these naturally occurring patterns- like a fractal sequence... i wonder what gave the inspiration for this method of building the temple...

StephT said...
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StephT said...

There are apparently also hints of fractal architecture in ancient Egypt. There are infinite self-similar structures that are also seen in Ethiopian crosses, Egyptian cosmological icons, and Cameroon bronze ware.

tara sellios said...

I think it's amazing that ancient structures are still standing strong, while many of the things we build today fall apart rather quickly. There are probably many reasons for this, but I think part of it may be that the ancients relied on simple, mathematical concepts rather than complicated, fast designs.