Modular Fractal Pyramid, designed by me, based on Jun Maekawa’s Fractal Pyramid
Some time ago, someone showed me Jun Maekawa’s Fractal Pyramid, and I thought, I could make that modular. So I designed custom units–actually, several distinct custom units. This is definitely over-designed, and not fit for sharing instructions, but it can be fun to make a one-of-a-kind model.
How many units would you guess are in this model? Highlight to see answer: It’s 29.
Woven Fourteenth Stellation of the Icosahedron designed by Daniel Kwan
Some years ago I went to an origami convention, and I thought I’d bring something big and flashy. So I found this design by Daniel Kwan, decided an appropriate coloring, and the size of the final model surprised me.
No I don’t really know what the “14th Stellation of the Icosahedron is”, I just take Daniel Kwan’s word for it that that’s what it is. I do know that to “stellate” a polyhedron means to extend the planes of each face outwards, beyond their usual shapes. Wikipedia has a list of 59 ways to stellate an icosahedron, and this one seems to be arbitrarily designated the 14th stellation.
Flower Tessellation, designed by some guy I know locally
Today’s model is a tessellation that someone from the local origami meetup showed me how to make. Sigh, remember meetups? (Actually the issue is I moved and it’s far away.) Anyway, this guy said he had been making tessellations for decades (?), before any of the origami tessellation books came out. He had perfected a particular tessellation base, which is used in the model above. He had a way of folding it with minimal precreasing.
I feel like I explain these terms over and over, but I don’t want people to feel overly confused by what I’m talking about. Precreasing is when you make creases in the paper before collapsing it into the shape you want. The normal method for making origami tessellations involves lots of precreasing, making a grid of squares or triangles. I have a photo example below.
Daylily, designed by Meenakshi Mukerji
This is a 30-piece floral ball, or kusudama. Not too much to say about it.
Except: this is one of the oldest origami photos I’ve posted, from 2013. Whatever happened to this model? I can’t find it in storage, and don’t remember giving it away. I have to imagine it got damaged or destroyed. Nothing lasts forever. I often think back to a passage from origamist Tomoko Fuse:
Sometimes I burn origami that have been crushed or that prove unsuccessful in one way or another. As I watch the green, blue, and orange flames (probably caused by the pigments used to color the paper), I reflect on the sad ephemerality of those animal forms and starlike solid-geometric figures and on the time I spent engrossed in creating them.
–Tomoko Fuse, Unit Origami: Multidimensional Transformations
Words to live by. Enjoy the rest of spring.
Mucube, designed by me, made out of modified Sonobe units
Someone asked me if this model was based on the Ukrainian flag. Point in fact, I made this model last year, so it wasn’t. But let’s say it is now.
This design was inspired by Jan Misali’s video about the 48 regular polyhedra. The mucube is a series of connected squares that infinitely tile R3. Whether this really counts as a regular polyhedron is dubious… but obviously a great target for an origami design. I liked it so much that I made two of them. The other is below the fold.
Rhombus Weave, designed by Eric Gjerde
At this point in time, I have almost 10 years of origami photos to choose from, and though the pace of my artwork has slowed during the pandemic, I still have a large number of photos in my backlog. (You can, of course, find them all if you find the link on my sidebar.) This one comes from an earlier era when I didn’t care what was in the background, because the photos were only for myself, and the backgrounds added flavor. A few of these are embarrassing, but I actually like this one because it’s the balcony view from my old apartment.
This origami tessellation comes from Eric Gjerde’s classic book, Origami Tessellations, definitely recommended if you ever want an introduction. The pattern on the paper has horizontal lines, but the rhombuses are twisted so that the lines undulate up and down.
Last month I heard a lot of buzz about the James Webb Space Telescope. So I made origami of it.
James Webb Telescope, designed by Robert J. Lang. Folding template online.
Specifically, this is just the big mirror component of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Since people are currently interested in the JWST, and since I just made origami of it, and since I have a physics background, I thought I’d talk about it. Or at least, explain why the mirrors look that way.