Aperiodic Boxes

the story

This was a wild one! The clients for these Aperiodic Boxes saw the Liese Wine Cabinet and knew that we were game for geometrical challenges. They have a (healthy) fixation with aperiodic tiling patterns, where shapes can be arranged to cover a plane to infinity yet never repeat a pattern in translation. While we were discussing different options, in March 2023 a new class of polygons was discovered that, for the first time ever, can do this with only one shape. We committed to this immediately, so you are surely looking at the first wine storage system using that polygon. One fundamental challenge was that the storage be reconfigurable by the clients to different patterns, which led to (twenty) independent boxes, with thirteen sides each and requiring tight tolerances. Now they can find their own patterns and realize them using these maple-veneered boxes, while we rest a bit.

A stack of twenty boxes, where each is a complex 13-sided polygon.

A stack of twenty boxes, arranged differently than the image above, where each is a complex 13-sided polygon. Some hold wine bottles.

The living room of a loft with rough concrete walls, showing the aperiodic wine box stack in the corner.

A closer view of a single 13-sided polygon box.

A tiling arrangement of hundreds of the 13-sided polygons fitting together like tiles.

The title, authors, and abstract of the Smith et al. paper titled "An Aperiodic Monotile" from March 2023.

A pile of strips of wood cut off from making a set of eight 13-sided boxes.