Photography and illustrations by Charles Platt
Purely Platonic
A dodecahedron table lamp.
People appear symmetrical, but even the most perfect human face shows irregularities if we compare the left side with the right. Perhaps this is why the absolute, rigid symmetry of crystals seems beautiful yet alien to us. Unlike DNA’s soft spiral, a crystal’s molecular bonds align themselves to form regular three-dimensional structures, which the Greeks considered mathematically pure. The most fundamental of these shapes are known as the five Platonic solids.
If you assemble equal-sided triangles — all the same size, with the same angles ...
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