Archive for February, 2007

Ralf Konrad’s notes from the 2006 Italian origami convention

February 28th, 2007

I had the great pleasure of finally meeting Ralf Konrad at the 2006 CDO convention in Verbania, Italy. (Actually, going to meet him was the main reason I went there in the first place!)

He posted a great write up of the convention on his site- in German- which I can’t read, and the babelfish isn’t so great at translating. Much thanks to Peter (Syngola on flickr) for translating it to English for us monolinguistic Americanos!

Read the English version on Ralf Konrad’s website. Thanks Ralf! I hope to see you again soon!

Ralf Konrad, myself, and Mélisande at the CDO convention, 2006

Posted in origami, origami tessellations | Comments (2)

Ramin Razani’s Livre Anémomètre (Wind Gauge)

February 26th, 2007

Jeff Rutzky sent me a photo and video of this wonderful design by Ramin Razani, which will be appearing in Rutzky’s upcoming book Kirigami (by Barnes and Noble Inc, 2007).

I’m a big fan of paper arts, not just origami- and we like to cut paper around our house, just as much as folding it. Ever since we picked up a CraftROBO a few months back there’s been a lot of time wastedwell spent on making paper architecture and other fun things.

I’m really looking forward to buying a copy of this book- the patterns I’ve seen so far are just excellent!

Check out Jeff’s Flickr stream for more kirigami goodness.

For this model by Razani, the best part is the action- I had no idea it would do this! So simple yet beautiful!

Posted in art, design, paper, papercraft | Comments (6)

Sliceform Torus

February 25th, 2007

I saw this amazing sliceform torus on YouTube, thanks to a link from Jorge Jaramillo (commented on this great set of sliceforms by Joan Michaels Paque.) I shouldn’t be browsing around Flickr, as I’m on a self-imposed Flickr hiatus, but Sunday’s a day of rest, so I treated myself to a few minutes of browsing :)

The coolest part of the video is the way the model folds flat and pops back into 3D!

The creator of this fantastic sliceform says this, on the YouTube commentary:

This torus has been made as a Sliceform.

It is a paper model made from two sets of slices of the torus.
It folds flat because the intersection of each set of slices acts as a hinge.
The slices are cut so that one set includes the Villarceau circles.
For more on Sliceforms do a web search with Google.
See www.tarquinbooks.com for books of models to cut out and ways to explore the mathematics of surfaces using Sliceforms.

Check it out, it’s worth a look. Lots of great people are doing sliceform stuff these days [1][2][3], maybe it’s time to give it a go?

If you’re looking to get started into Sliceforms, most definitely check out this website:

http://www.mathsyear2000.co.uk/explorer/slice/index.shtml

It covers what they are, how they are made, has templates for downloading, the whole thing. This is definitely a great opportunity to put a CraftROBO to work…

Posted in art, design, geometry, math, paper, papercraft | Comments (0)

Amazing russian origami tessellations

February 22nd, 2007

Stop whatever it is you’re doing and go check out these tessellations!

http://community.livejournal.com/ru_pop_up/32317.html

On the Russian LiveJournal Origamic Architecture group, which includes previous OT fave tekuila as a member…

Oh, how much I wish that I remembered more Russian! Time to dig out my dictionaries and brush up, because this LJ group seems to be full of some amazing things!

UPDATE: Alex from the O-list helps out, and says:

They are all university assignments, some made to original CPs and some
to anonymous CPs found in the college. I don’t know what college, but
the Chair is of Communicative Design, according to comments.

This makes me wonder what kind of classes they are teaching? I would love to take classes like that, for sure…

Posted in art, design, origami, origami tessellations | Comments (4)

Knappa Klöver Lamp from IKEA

February 21st, 2007

Ken’ichi wrote me the other day, asking about the Knappa Klöver lamp from IKEA:

Do you know the lamp sold in Ikea called Knappa Klöver? I am more interested in the floor lamp version. I have attached a pic of this lamp, and I was wondering if you know how one comes about in making it?

So I sat down and thought about it a bit, and came up with a solution. Here’s my reply:

I haven’t seen this lamp in IKEA- I try to avoid going to the local IKEA and wandering through the lamp area, because I want to buy them all… but looking at the picture, I can make some guesses at how it is made.

If you look at the attached image, I traced over some of the shapes on the lamp: the basic structure is an icosahedron (nice info here: http://www.miracerros.com/artwork/g_sphere_layout.htm)

So, since the basic structure is an icosahedron, that means that each vertex of the icosahedron has five lines meeting together. This means the lamp is made up completely from pentagonal petal shapes.

I can’t tell how the five petals are held together at the center; maybe either glue, or some little connector piece? or perhaps they are cut lower down, and connected together with another spherical shape that has five slots in it? Anyway, they are connected together somehow- I’d probably make a small plastic piece to hold them all at the right angle- and they all have identical slots cut below the center line of the circle, to connect the pentagonal flowers together.

There should be 12 flower shapes, as the icosahedron has 12 vertices; this would require cutting out 60 circles of some sort of plastic, maybe light polypropylene?

A very simple lamp, but nicely designed. I’m sure, given IKEA’s “flat pack” philosophy, that all of this is stamped or laser cut and bundled together in a small box. With the right cutting equipment you could make a lot of these, really fast.

Now that I think about it, since they are cutting all this from one sheet of plastic, the connector piece for the center of the pentagonal flowers is probably also cut out from this same plastic, because that would make the design a lot cheaper. Some experimentation with cutting smaller disks of plastic with 5 slots in them would most likely find a solution.

I’d love a job designing such things, I think it would be a lot of fun!

Here’s the image I was working on, which shows the icosahedron hiding underneath all those circular petals.

(image from anjapepunkt on flickr)

UPDATE:

Ken’ichi found someone with photos of the Knappa Klover construction manual on flickr! That helps a lot, and it shows that the lamp is much simpler than I thought.

It’s just triangle-shaped pieces with circular tips, and slots cut in them- so you just assemble all the sides of the icosahedron from these triangle bits, and they lock together. Very neat. I should have expected it would be something so clever, coming from IKEA…

Posted in art, design, lighting | Comments (8)

Waterbomb Corrugation Animation, by Tomohiro Tachi

February 12th, 2007

Tomohiro Tachi (website, flickr) has some wonderful animated 3D simulations of paper folding- I really like this one of a waterbomb tessellation/corrugation pattern being manipulated and changing size/shape/orientation. One of my most favorite things to do with pleated paper is to make strange and different shapes out of them, and this video shows that process in action…

It reminds me a lot of this design by my friend Sipho Mabona:

Posted in design, flickr photos, geometry, origami, origami tessellations | Comments (1)

Things to remember

February 8th, 2007

Try to keep in mind what is really
important and not just what is most pressing.

Some critical things to remember, these days. Thanks for the good words, my friend.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Amazing collapsing accordion-style sofa

February 5th, 2007

I saw this fascinating piece of flat-pack furniture on Boingboing - and I just had to repost it. Check out the video:

I absolutely want one of these!

via boingboing.net

Posted in design | Comments (7)

Joel Cooper has a blog!

February 5th, 2007

I’ve been busy with some projects the last few weeks, and have really been out of touch with what’s happening lately. But I was very pleased to hear this morning from Philip that Joel Cooper has a blog! It’s great to see him have more of a web presence, as I see a pretty constant smattering of hits from people looking for him and his work- now there’s somewhere more concrete for them to see. (You’d think people could track down his contact info via Flickr, but somehow that rarely seems to happen- go figure.)

So congrats on the new undertaking, Joel, I’m looking forward to seeing new things from you! And I heartily encourage anyone else who is folding on a regular basis to consider starting a website/blog/etc to have a “home” for your web presence- it helps to connect people to you, and gives others a centralized starting point to refer to. This is a big plus, and very helpful for folks who want to find your work. Good all around!

Posted in origami, origami tessellations, weblinks | Comments (3)

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