Flickr origamist eightlines posted a set of photos of this wonderful geometric experiment.
I love the way it comes together in the center- very cleanly and simply. and it makes a great cup/bowl shape; industrial origami + rigid folding time! I wonder how hard it would be to press one of these out of PVC or something sturdier like ABS plastic.
These kinds of designs are difficult to fold, at least for me- it’s great to see someone make one that is so nice and crisp.
hop on over to flickr and take a peek, if you have a chance.
Thanks for the wonderful comments Eric! I was inspired by your folds and didn’t expect you to spot it this quick. Still having trouble figuring out how you managed the “hole/button” in the centre of your logarithmic bowl!
My method for folding this so crisp (although I can spot lots of bad spots) is to fold a blintz base out of a square piece of paper. Squash the layers of the blintz till you get a kite shape. Keep squashing the flaps in the kite shape till you get a wedge small enough to your liking (I didn’t go too far -aka 2x – because it adds to the complexity of the fold). Cut(!) the tips of the kite off, this will make the paper a ‘circle’. Unfold completely. It should represent a cake with a bunch of wedges coming from the center. Select one crease and mountain fold the circle in half. Follow the first wedge down from the centre to the edge. Place your finger in the point. Do the same on the other side. Valley fold from the point where your fingers mark each side. Do the same on the reverse. Unfold the paper and rotate it one wedge, mountain fold and do the valley folds on the first wedge down.
Once you’re done just collapse all the sections however you like.
It doesn’t solve the hole or button you’ve created, but I really enjoyed the process of figuring it out. Thanks for the inspiration!
cutting is no problem, at least for me- usually I avoid it but sometimes to make something more practical it really helps.
I’m intrigued with your process here, and I’ll have to give it a try. I really prefer to had methods of folding that are all done by hand without extra tools, unlike the way I made my bowl. That’s one reason why I find your method so appealing- no extra bits needed to generate the pattern and get it folded!
for the one I made, I took a 12 inch square of paper, and plotted out (using a ruler and a compass) a set of circles, divided out by the Fibonacci sequence. I think I measured units as 1cm; so it was first ring, 1cm out, second ring, another 1cm out, third ring, 2cm further out, etc. (1,1,2,3,5,8,11, and so on).
Doing this gives you a logarithmic pattern, so when you fold the “kite” shapes each kite retains the same angles as the layer before it, while growing to a larger size. it took me a little while to figure out how to do this, although I think there are many methods of accomplishing it- this just happened to be the way I tried it.
when you fold this pattern down to the first “ring”, it naturally curves and creates the “hole” in the center; on the one I have, the whole “first ring” (or the 1cm circle) in the center is unfolded, and kind of pops out. I wish I could say that behavior was intentional, but it really wasn’t, just a happy discovery.
I’m going to have try to fold your version and coat it with resin, and see if I can’t make myself a nice little origami cup/bowl, that’s actually in the proper shape for such an object!
thanks for sharing your methodology, I appreciate it very much.
(and it’s easy to find new origami objects when they are tagged with the “origami” tag, and I subscribe to the RSS feed for everything with that tag… although it becomes a bit of an addiction after a while!)