Federation Square

1
Federation Square

• Name
• Work through this activity in Normal View mode.
  This appears in the bottom left-hand corner.
• Click on the double down arrows on the scroll bar
  to move from slide to slide.

2
Federation Square is a fabulous public building
in the city of Melbourne, Australia. Its façade
is covered with one shape, repeated many times in
a tessellating pattern. This shape is a
right-angled triangle. Each right-angled
triangle is made of different materials
sandstone, zinc and glass, all cut to an
identical size. It is often referred to as an
example of the fusion between mathematics, art
and architecture.
3
Snap to Grid
Before you start this activity, it is important
that you disable the snap to grid function. Draw
menu gt Grid and Guides, then remove the tick on
Snap objects to grid. If you dont, you will
become frustrated with shapes not tessellating.
They will either leave large gaps or overlap.
Make sure you remove the tick.
/ Grid
4
At Federation Square each façade panel is made up
of five right-angled triangles.
façade panels
Use the Rotate or Flip tools in Draw (NOT Free
Rotate) to organise and place each right-angled
triangle on the left in a tessellating pattern
that resembles a façade panel. Once you have
created the perfectly arranged design, select all
five pieces and group them to make the five
elements one.
5
At Federation Square, five façade panels make up
what is called a mega panel. Q. How many small
right-angled triangles are there in a mega panel?
A. Q. How many small right-angled triangles are
there in a façade panel? A.
6
Copy your façade panel from slide 4 and paste it
onto this slide. Duplicate it four times, then
use the Rotate or Flip tools in Draw (NOT Free
Rotate) to create your mega panel.
7
Study this photograph. Try to identify the façade
panels and mega panels. Do you know which tiles
are made of glass, zinc or sandstone?
8
Work with this single right-angled triangle to
create your own façade design of Federation
Square. Start with a series of façade panels,
then mega panels, grouping them as you progress.
Try to arrange sandstone, zinc and glass in a
similar way to those you see in clusters on the
previous slide. TIP There is no need to use
Free Rotate. Create three colour variants to
represent sandstone, zinc and glass colours. Drag
a text box over the completed tessellation, type
in your name and class, and then print in
colour. Once you have read these instructions,
click on this text box and press delete to make
more space for your tessellation.
9
Duplicate the right-angled triangles on the page
to create a design similar to the one you see in
the top right-hand corner of the screen. You may
use the Rotate or Flip tools (but not Free
Rotate) to create a similar tessellation. Keyboard
shortcuts Ctrl D for PC, ? D for Mac.
10
Federation Square Number Problems

• Right-angle triangles on the façades of
  Federation Square
• 7,865 are made of sandstone
• 12,325 are made of zinc
• 1,883 are made of glass.
• Q. How many right-angled triangles make up all
  the façades of Federation Square?
• A.
• Q. A total of 625 single right-angled triangles
  cover a large section of the Alfred Deakin
  Building at Federation Square. How many façade
  panels would make up this large section?
• A.
• Q. How did you work this out?
• A.
• Q. How many mega panels would make up this large
  section?
• A.
• Q. How did you work this out?
• A.

11
Print this activity as a handout. Rather than
print individual pages and waste paper, print
this activity as a handout with six slides on
each page. That means the whole task will fit
onto a few pages instead of many.

• INSTRUCTIONS
• Select Print from the File menu.
• (Mac Pull down on the Copies Pages menu and
  select Microsoft PowerPoint.)
• Within the Print Dialogue Box, click on the Print
  what pull down menu and select Handouts (6 slides
  per page).
• Click OK/Print.
• PRESTO!