Biological Tiles Make Life Beautiful

Is something going on
more than mere conse-
quences of natural laws?

This article was first published at Science & Culture Today last month.

Tiled Beauty: Functional Aesthetics in Biology

by David Coppedge
Science & Culture Today, 5 Dec 2025

Humans have long been drawn to tessellated patterns: “repeated pattern of geometric, discrete elements bound by a joint material.” A brick wall bound by mortar is a simple example; tiles and mosaics are more sophisticated. Artists have incorporated tiles into their creations. The drawings of M. C. Escher reached sublime levels, often including biological figures like birds. But why would living organisms, whose purpose is to survive and reproduce, form tessellated patterns? Is something going on more than mere consequences of natural laws? Are they mere spandrels of survival?

Functional Needs, Repeating Patterns

This question attracted the attention of nine international scientists writing in PNAS Nexus, representing “a diversity of disciplines involving biologists, computer scientists, engineers, and designers, allowing us to examine biological tilings from a range of perspectives.” In their paper, “Tiled material systems: Exploring biodiversity and multifunctionality of a universal and structural motif,” Jana Ciecierska-Holmes et al. asked why functional needs of organisms would result in repeating patterns that humans find beautiful.

Humans are drawn to patterns and hierarchies in nature, mimicking them particularly in decoration and architecture. Natural patterns, however, are never purely esthetic and, since evolution works on a variety of factors simultaneously, natural structural systems are intrinsically multifunctional. In order to understand the roles that structural patterns play in biology (and therefore their potential capabilities and utilization in design, architecture and engineering), we need to catalog and encapsulate the diversity of examples and the materials involved. Here, we provide a first classification of biological “tilings,” tessellated natural architectures that involve the repeated pattern of geometric, discrete elements bound by a joint material. By examining 100 examples across the Tree of Life, we reveal this natural structural motif is unexpectedly prevalent: we cover a huge taxonomic diversity, eight orders of magnitude in size scale, and myriad morphologies and functions ranging from optics to armor, allowing us to construct a hierarchical system of eight variables to classify form, function, and materiality in biological tilings. [Emphasis added]

From their investigation of these 100 examples, they created a database “as a multidisciplinary meeting point (e.g. for biologists, designers, engineers, architects)” that could be used “exploring selective pressures and trade-offs and a launchpad for future research and collaborative, cross-disciplinary, bioinspired projects.” How does their project impinge on questions of Darwinism vs. design? Is there any conceivable “selective pressure” for tiled patterns? And wouldn’t consideration of trade-offs presuppose the foresight to choose the best set of options?…

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