I folded this from someone else’s origami book, which was in Japanese.  I don’t know why it’s called U4-30, although I know the “30” comes from the 30 sheets of paper it’s made from.  Perhaps this is the sort of technical name you come up with when you’ve designed lots and lots of variants.  Yes, it was an entire book of roses and floral balls (Origami Rose & Kusudama).  It’s very nice, so I think it deserves an entire book of variants.

It’s a curler unit, meaning the units are attached by twisting them together.  I used three slightly different shades of red, which gives it a subtle texture without creating contrast between the different units.

This is a tessellation by David Huffman, which I took directly from an academic article titled “Reconstructing David Huffman’s Origami Tessellations“.  It’s a great starting point if you want to fold 3-dimensional tessellations, or at least it would be if anyone made tutorials for it.  I’m shocked that this tessellation isn’t more widely known.

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I’m out travelling, but I brought some origami paper to fold.  I got this model from the 5th Geometric Origami Convention, and folded it on the train.  It’s essentially a variant of the herringbone tessellation, but slightly shifted so that it makes a shape like a sea urchin.

This is a pleat-based design, similar to other designs I’ve posted before.  They’re fairly simple to fold on the spot and improvise.  This probably took me like 20 minutes to fold, but I like the idea.

So what’s the idea behind this one?  I fold the paper into 16 divisions… and also 15 divisions.  So the outermost pleat is 1/16 – 1/15 = 1/240.  The next pleat is 2/16 – 2/15 = 2/240, and so on.  So the pleats are very small towards the edge of the paper, and very large towards the center.  Ever since I demonstrated this idea to myself, I’ve been wondering how I can apply it to make more complex designs.

How do I fold 15 divisions, you ask?  I have some diagrams here, but I’ve been thinking for a while I ought to make some clearer diagrams.

I got this drawer box from something called the Practical Origami Convention.  I didn’t actually attend the convention, but happened to access the models later, and picked this one out to fold.  I have to imagine that there are a bunch of origamists making “practical” designs like tiny chairs to sit on, and tiny tables to hold tiny flowers.  (I’m joking, I know that practical origami has a lot of emphasis on boxes and envelopes.)

I can’t remember how many sheets this needed, but it was over 10.  Each drawer is a separate sheet, with another sheet to be used as lining.  The cabinet box (I had to look up what this part of the drawer is called) is made of 4 pieces, or maybe more?

Now obviously there’s a lot of origami that stretches what you would think is possible with a single sheet.  But other designs are more sheet-maximalist, with multiple distinct units working together.  There’s some complexity in that; you need to make the sizes match, accounting for the thickness of the paper, and some units need to be firmly attached to each other.

Here’s a horse I folded at a conference many years ago.  It’s meant to stand on its hind legs, although you’d really need to attach it to a stand.

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