The formation of sensory organs is an important developmental and evolutionary question. In the context of regenerative medicine also, it is important to know as accurately as possible how sensory organs form. The formation of ears, eyes or nose, stem presumably from tissue thickenings called placodes 1,2 which become these organs after processes termed inductions. However, the origin of the placodes, the mechanism of induction, and the overall face organization are not understood. Recently, it has been suggested that there is a physical principle to face organization. There exists a pattern of rings and rays in the early blastula which defines the position of face landmarks, especially the ears and eyes 3,4. Tensions in the sectors defined by the intersections of the said rings and rays create the actual face features. I report here that a similar situation exists for the nose. This explains the robustness of face formation in the chordates phylum. By studying nasal pit formation in the chicken embryo by Time-Lapse (T-L) video-microscopy, I show that the nasal placode originates in a narrow sector deformed by tension forces following the biaxial pattern of rings and rays mentionned above. Cells align in the pattern and exert organized forces. Further contractions of the pattern contribute to inducing the nasal pit. The observation of the early pre-pattern of lines which locks the facial features explains readily a number of facts regarding sensory organs. Especially the existence of a lacrimal canal between the eye and the nose 5 , or of a slit connecting the nose to the mouth, the correlation between nose, mouth and eye morphogenesis 6 , the presence of shallow valleys on the nasal and optic vesicles, the medio-lateral asymmetry of nostrils with often a bent slit 7 , the uneven number of nostrils in many fish 8 and possibly the transition between agnatha and gnathostomes 9 : all appear under this light, geometrically straightforward. Main Understanding the formation of organs is an important scientific endeavor. There exist several types of organs. Sensory organs of the head are particular in that they play a crucial role in our humanity : they are partly external, we sense the world with them, and they define our identity (an identity photography is a portrait). The biology of the face and of the sensory organs is therefore of great importance at symbolic, psychological and medical levels. In the contexts of pediatric surgery