From the Deep: Designing Water from Chaos to Order

Genesis 1 begins not with order, but with chaos—formless and void or empty as most translations render it. I’ve come to favor Robert Alter’s “welter and waste” or the Bible Project’s “wild and waste,” both of which honor the Hebrew rhyme tohu vavohu (וָבֹהוּ תֹהוּ).

As a child, I’d sketch waters with playful, jagged peaks—like the stiff tips of meringue whipped from egg whites. It was a five-year-old’s way of drawing water.

But how does one translate that childlike chaos into ordered geometry?

In architecture school, I encountered the cycloid vault—a curve traced by the rolling edge of a circle. Louis Kahn employed it masterfully in many of his works, and its beauty and restraint made a lasting impression on me. This wave motif in Chaos to Creation is a quiet homage to his influence.

By inverting the cycloid vault 180 degrees, it becomes the waters of the pre-creation state and Days 1 through 3. From the wild and waste, a rhythm emerges.

In the spread for “Day 0,” the waves are large, restless—evoking the untamed deep. In Days 1 to 3, they shrink and shift position, suggesting the same waters are still present, still potent, but now subdued under the command of God. The chaos is not eliminated—it is contained. It forms the seas below and heavens above.

The drawing for Day 2 draws directly from my architectural background, serving as a quiet tribute to Louis Kahn, my favorite architect. His influence—particularly his use of the cycloid vault—inspired the visual structure of the firmament: measured, weighty, and full of mystery.