Wythoffian Skeletal Polyhedra in Ordinary Space, I

Abstract: Skeletal polyhedra are discrete structures made up of finite, flat or skew, or infinite, helical or zigzag, polygons as faces, with two faces on each edge and a circular vertex-figure at each vertex. When a variant of Wythoff's construction is applied to the forty-eight regular skeletal polyhedra (Grunbaum-Dress polyhedra) in ordinary space, new highly symmetric skeletal polyhedra arise as "truncations" of the original polyhedra. These Wythoffians are vertex-transitive and often feature vertex configurations with an attractive mix of different face shapes. The present paper describes the blueprint for the construction and treats the Wythoffians for distinguished classes of regular polyhedra. The Wythoffians for the remaining classes of regular polyhedra will be discussed in Part II, by the second author. We also examine when the construction produces uniform skeletal polyhedra.