Category: Origami

Paper: Folded | Cut | Crumpled

10/10/2015

This past March to August, I was happy to be part of the international exhibition of paper art at the Jaffa Museum in Israel, titled "Paper: Folded | Cut | Crumpled". The exhibition, curated by Paul Jackson, aimed to display the multitude of art forms that could be created from paper, and their diverse modes of artistic expression. Besides some of my favourite origami artists like Robert Lang and Giang Dinh, my eyes were opened by kinds of other paper art, from the architectural paper sculptures of Christina Lihan to the paper coil collages of Moshe Gordon. My own contribution was my Double Happiness origami model, featured in my origami design gallery. I'm glad it could play a part towards expanding the general public's horizons regarding the possibilities of the humble sheet of paper!

Double Happiness (left) displayed at the Jaffa Museum

Check out the other amazing art pieces in the Jaffa Museum's abums below! Vincent Floderer's haunting "sea creatures" fashioned out of crumpled paper are some of my favourites.

כולכם מוזמנים להגיע לחוויה נדירה וראשונה מסוגה בישראל. התערוכה פתוחה ברציפות החל מ 10:00 - 18:00 בכל יום!במהלך חול המוע...
Posted by ‎מוזיאון יפו Jaffa Museum‎ on Friday, April 3, 2015

הצצה לעבודות האמנים הישראלים המשתתפים בתערוכה
Posted by ‎מוזיאון יפו Jaffa Museum‎ on Friday, April 10, 2015

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6OSME

9/7/2014

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Origami? Folding bits of paper? You mean that children's pastime? It can't possibly be of any "real" use, right?
What if I told you that origami has been applied in space technology?

Miura-ori by MetaNest

Miura map fold solar array

The 6th International Meeting on Origami in Science, Mathematics and Education (6OSME) was held in Tokyo University in August to help origami researchers, artists and educators share their ideas on the connections between origami and a wide range of other fields, including applications in theory and industry.

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Can You Fold It?

6/10/2014

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Grab a milk or juice carton and there's a fair chance you'd find that it's from Tetra Pak, a Swedish company that focuses on food packaging and processing solutions. A few months ago Tetra Pak invited ten people from around the world to a package design workshop aimed at brainstorming an improved design to one of their commercial packages. I qualified through their "Can You Fold It?" competition, in which contestants had to dream up a simple but creative way to close the end of a cardboard tube—which is basically what package manufacturers have to do.

Image from "Can You Fold It?" qualification phase

Tetra Pak

Tetra Pak's pioneering product was the Tetra Classic®, but probably more familiar is the Tetra Rex®.

The Tetra Classic®. Still in use today in some countries; some Singaporeans may recognize it from their childhood.
Photo by Tetra Pak (CC BY-SA).

The Tetra Rex®.
Cropped photo; original by Tetra Pak (CC BY-SA).

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Colors and Symmetry in Skeletal Octahedra

3/14/2014

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Next week I'm conducting an origami math workshop for Grade 8 students, and one of the activities will be to fold a skeletal octahedron (really simple modular origami). The students will be asked to choose between five octahedra I already folded in various colors, to see what kind of color schemes and arrangements appeal to them. We can then discuss about symmetry, graph coloring and more.

It would also be interesting to see which color schemes people like, even before the workshop, so here goes!

Color Schemes 1—5 (from left)

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Humpback Whale (Lafosse & Alexander)

1/3/2014

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These days I hardly fold any origami, but when I do, it's usually from either of the books Origami Art or Advanced Origami, both by Michael G. Lafosse & Richard L. Alexander from their Origamido Studio. Their designs have this elegance and beauty that attract me, and leaves me satisfied when I am able to reproduce part of that beauty with my own hands.

So when I offered to fold a present for a friend, I asked him to choose from those books. He picked their Humpback Whale.

Elephanthide paper, wet-folded

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Icosahedron (Origami Design)

9/10/2013

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I designed this for a friend I met at an exchange programme to Qingdao because of his interest in math.

One uncut square, designed in January 2008.

This model is mainly a tube with sealed ends. The following series of folding instructions will make this apparent:

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Nun (Origami Design)

9/9/2013

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I improvised this design in class using an envelope that was lying around.

Uncut envelope, designed in August 2008.

"Crease pattern"

I liked being able to use the flap of the envelope as part of the nun's gown - so I was using the envelope "fully" and not simply as a rectangular sheet of paper!

Thinking back, I was probably inspired by Vietnamese origami master Giang Dinh's evocative abstract human figures:

Little Girl & Cat (2007)

Red Fox 4 (2008)

You must check out his achingly beautiful origami faces, animals and figures. I saw his gorgeous work in a book of photographs from an origami exhibition, titled Masters of Origami: At Hanger-7.

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