In case it’s not clear what’s going on in the photo, the model is in the shape of a cube, and we are looking at it directly onto one of the vertices.  However, the vertex has been cut out, and there is a triangular hole in its place.  There is also a triangular hole on the opposite end, so that you can see directly through the cube.  The triangles aren’t really triangles, but they look triangular from just the right perspective.

Today’s model was inspired by the regular toroid.  You may have heard of a torus, which is the shape of a donut, or a mug.  A toroidal polyhedron (aka a toroid) is a polyhedron which is also a torus.  A regular toroid is a toroidal polyhedron where each face has the same number of sides, and each vertex connects the same number of edges.

[Read more…]

Fuse has a series of models that consist of basic polyhedra, with extra pieces of paper attached as embellishments.  This model is a cube (made of 12 pieces of paper) with a pyramid added to each face, and 3 spikes to each vertex.  All in all, that’s 42 pieces of paper.  This is a pretty neat idea.  Since it is made of three distinct types of units, it defies the usual convention of making modular origami from many identical units.

This one’s a fairly old model, apparently made in 2013.  I gave it away as a gift so I don’t know if it’s still living, or deceased.

In the past year I’ve been dabbling a lot into other kinds of origami, such as traditional origami, tessellations, and minimalist designs.  But still, it’s good to make some modular origami models.  This is a kusudama model of very standard design.  30 units, 5 colors arranged symmetrically.  Although, I actually made 2 of the 5 colors identical, which is a cheeky way of making it slightly asymmetrical.  This was made as a gift for a relative.

Pizza Wedge, a design/experiment by me

I acquired a copy of Folding Techniques for Designers: From Sheet to Form, by Paul Jackson.  It has a rather unusual, but refreshing perspective.  Basically, it tries to avoid the origami tradition entirely, and instead focuses on folding as an element of design.  Several chapters are occupied by simple ideas about pleating paper.  The reader is encouraged to experiment, and this is just one basic experiment.

The Pizza Wedge is not technically challenging to create, but its simple and abstract nature leads one to contemplate the little details.  One emergent property of the paper is the negative curvature (i.e. the saddle shape).  When you crease a paper back and forth, on the macro scale the paper compresses in one direction.  When I added the “crust” of the pizza, that suppressed the creases, which has the effect of stretching the paper on one side.  The stretching and compressing leads to negative curvature.

I include a second experiment below the fold.

[Read more…]

Basket Weave, by unknown

This comes from Eric Gjerde’s book, Origami Tessellations, although Gjerde says it’s a “common design”.  It was one of the earliest tessellations I made, apparently dating to 2014.  They were quite challenging to make at first.  It might be interesting to fold another one just to see how much I’ve improved.

I remember people being very impressed by this one.  I’d tell people, no it’s just one sheet of paper.  The strips of paper that appear to be woven together are not actually continuous, that’s just an illusion.

You might have noticed that I have a very strong preference for non-representational origami.  Non-representational origami does not seek to represent any particular object, and only seeks to be itself.  (Arguably many of my models represent mathematical concepts, but I’m declaring that this doesn’t count.)

But I do dabble.  I was part of the origami group at my university, and they would usually fold things like this.  These models represent dragons.  Yes, for some reason I folded two of them.  You can learn how to make these from Jo Nakashima’s website.

I am not particularly skilled at making these, I mean, considering how much origami I do.  The models shown are messy, and I often have trouble interpreting the diagrams.  But I do like these dragons.