Random Samples

It’s not common that a mathematical formula inspires a wall-covering, but Calgary-based Arlene Stamp is not a typical designer. A math teacher turned visual artist, Stamp became interested in nonperiodic recursivity—patterns with motifs that appear to recur but don’t ever repeat exactly—after reading about Benoit Mandelbrot and the development of fractal theory.

When she installed a nonrepeating glass-tile mosaic in a Toronto subway station, people started asking if Stamp could extend the idea into other areas. So she partnered with public-art consultant Rina Greer to start StudioStampa, a design firm that produces custom patterns for carpets, wallpaper, floor tiles, and solar screens. “We’re trying to take the ‘boring’ out of pattern,” Greer says. “Imagine this: we can produce hallway rugs that don’t repeat from here to China.”

Stamp accomplishes this with software designed especially for her by a computer programmer at the University of Calgary. “I fold the pattern back into itself at a smaller scale and generate a new pattern that has exactly the same characteristics as the original,” she explains. “And you can keep doing that to generate increasing levels of complexity that still retain the same characteristics as the original. For example, the colors continue to be represented equally no matter how complex the pattern becomes.”

The resulting designs are not just unique to a given project; they affect how visitors perceive the space. With a typical wall-covering pattern, “you look down the hallway, and the walls close right in on you,” Stamp says. “But if you put a nonrepeating pattern on those two walls, then they don’t line up, so the whole wall opens up.”