Urban Tessellation: Reflections of Brisbane is a contemporary Brisbane map art series that reimagines the city’s geography through geometric patterns inspired by Persian tessellation. Transforming Brisbane’s mapped reality into a continuous, repeating geometric field, the artwork explores the relationship between urban form, spatial data, cultural identity and artistic abstraction.

The work is constructed through the overlay of four distinct cartographic layers of Brisbane: heritage maps from the 1840s, contemporary spatial data including a Digital Surface Model (DSM), and flood risk mapping. By systematically altering the order in which these layers are combined, four variations of the tessellation are produced. Each variation reveals different spatial hierarchies and relationships—sometimes privileging historical traces, at other times foregrounding topography or hydrological risk—resulting in subtly shifting interpretations of the same city.

Drawing from Persian traditions of geometry and ornament, the artwork references the logic of tessellation found in historic Persian carpets. In these carpets, repetition, symmetry and intricate patterning construct a sense of continuity and spatial infinity. Brisbane’s urban grid is translated into this visual language—its infrastructure becomes motif, its planning becomes ornament, and its landscape is absorbed into a system of interconnected forms that echo the meditative and highly structured qualities of Persian design.

The resulting composition operates as both map and textile surface: a distributed pattern capable of extending across space while retaining traces of place. Fragments of the city emerge and dissolve within the tessellated structure, blurring the boundary between representation and decoration. This tension invites viewers to reconsider Brisbane not as a static entity, but as an evolving pattern shaped by movement, memory and spatial logic.

Through the fusion of contemporary Brisbane map art and Persian tessellated aesthetics, the work situates Brisbane within a broader cultural lineage of pattern-making. Geometry, repetition and variation transform the city into a tactile and visual meditation on connectivity, growth and the hidden order embedded within the built environment.