ABSTRACT
The confluence of geometry and light in architecture has the power to create spaces of awe and wonderment. This is especially true of the uniquely Persian window orosi. Stretching from floor to ceiling, an orosi is a thin wooden screen of complex geometric patterns filled with colorful glass, mediating between the main room inside and the courtyard garden outside. This simultaneity of layers gestures to the arts, sciences, crafts, perception, religious imagination, and social and political aspects of their situated time—all present in the orosi window—that are most awakened for the viewer through an enchanting play of light and shadows. When seen in terms of the worlds it creates, the thin material window expands into a thick realm of thresholds and interpenetrations, inviting the viewer to partake in its conjuring. The orosi window embodies a tradition of the conceiving of geometric forms, namely girih, by geometers and mathematicians developed since the tenth century.
