Patterns, Streetscapes and Blockchains [About My Username]

About my Name

---

Thanks @anomadsoul for the nomination! I was tapped by A Nomad Soul to explain a bit more about my username "voronoi" and how it came to be. So, here's the story...

I <3 Patterns

---

Hi, my real name is Kirk. I'll be the first to admit - I'm a pattern guy. I am obsessed with maps, textures and networks - which is one of the reasons I was first drawn in to the blockchain universe. I like to think about the invisible gears churning that shape the cryptocurrency ecosystem. My obsession with the blockchain onion expanded as I continued to peel it. So simply put, I wanted a username that reminded me of those diagrams and patterns - a blend of interests - past and present.

When I landed on @voronoi, I was working as an urban designer at the architecture firm Cooper Robertson in New York City. The name itself had everything to do with a pattern project that I was working on at the time.

The Fabric of a Streetscape

---

I was very fortunate to be a Lead Designer and Project Manager on the Miracle Mile and Giralda Avenue Streetscape in Coral Gables, Florida. I worked on this project for close to three years, from beginning to end and was incredibly lucky to witness it being finished (a very rare thing in architectural practice).

I'll write a post series on the overall design and pattern - but for right now - here's a sneak peak of the new restaurant district “Giralda” in Coral Gables, Florida. It’s now open to the public, so if you’re in the area definitely go check it out -

• The paving plan (above) showcases the Florida sky-inspired color palette progression from East to West. Below, a mix of study drawings and the final paving in place!

Nodes and Oddities

---

The Giralda streetscape pattern is approximately 40,000 square feet of red-yellow-blue-yellow-red mosaic. Concentric circles radiate from the center points of palm trees, flowering trees, light poles and other elements. The circles overlap counter-clockwise and have super cool "clash" points where oddities in the pattern are revealed. It’s a dynamic pattern that gets even more dramatic with an afternoon rain shower - a signature of the Miami area - and also the inspiration behind the ripple effect of the concentric pavers.

The distances between trees and light poles were largely choreographed through the zoning required by local and state laws, measurements for parking spaces, buffers for storefront properties and loading zones. Our team was inspired by patterns found in nature, voronoi diagrams, water ripples and triangulated geometries.

Voronoi diagrams use the same logic of center points to generate organic in-between zones visible in the animation, below:

A Voronoi diagram is a partitioning of a plane into regions based on distance to points in a specific subset of the plane. That set of points (called seeds, sites, or generators) is specified beforehand, and for each seed there is a corresponding region consisting of all points closer to that seed than to any other. These regions are called Voronoi cells. The Voronoi diagram of a set of points is dual to its Delaunay triangulation. (Source.)

Next up - I'd like to nominate @hansikhouse!

---

^{Project images courtesy of Custom Tile and Cooper Robertson}

follow / @voronoi