Ten Thousand Year Heritage
The trip of a software engineer (and two architects)
For thousands of years, architects and craftsmen decorated their buildings with intricate symbols. Sometimes they got influenced from neighboring civilizations. Sometimes they invented new ones. But every culture added their own mark. They tried different patterns. They tried different colors. Thousands of years of human endeavor created countless designs in the buildings of the world. [The trip of a software engineer (and two architects), Chapter 01: Part II]
Ten Thousand Year Heritage
The trip of a software engineer (and two architects)
Chapter 01: Part II
By Baris Yuksel
For thousands of years, architects and craftsmen decorated their buildings with intricate symbols. Sometimes they got influenced from neighboring civilizations. Sometimes they invented new ones. But every culture added their own mark. They tried different patterns. They tried different colors. Thousands of years of human endeavor created countless designs in the buildings of the world.
These tessellations exist in many forms in all around the world, mostly in ancient buildings. Some of these buildings are protected. That is good. But some of them face the danger of extinction. Earthquakes, storms, wars, all threaten these buildings, and these patterns.
We can go a lot further than just cataloguing these in photos and videos. We can decode these patterns, and recreate them in code. We can make sure that our common heritage is digitized, but not to be saved, instead to find new life in the new buildings. We can build an open source library, open to all, including all the architects, artists, mathematicians, and software engineers. We can make sure that architects can use these patterns as easy as drawing a line.
Imagine a day where you can easily recreate the tessellations from Timur’s palace on your wall.
This is our heritage. This is the world’s heritage. We can create a library of them, and we can rebuild them in new buildings.
We dream the same dream as the ancient architects. Our goal is to carry their hard work into the future making it available for all humanity.
Baris Yuksel is a software engineer at Google. His interests include machine learning, algorithms, and helping humanity. He met the two architects, Lauren and Alexis in New York and now they are on a journey to decode architectural patterns in ancient buildings. Project Agama publishes its findings on instagram: http://instagram.com/projectagama
