Ron Resch, curved folds (from Ron Resch)

I highly recommend you check out the fledgling website belonging to Ron Resch, a visionary mathematician and designer who was one of (if not *the*) first to explore the architectural potential of 3D tessellated structures in the 1960’s and 70’s.

Only lately have I been exposed to more of his work, and the more I see the more I want to know. He has a film- called “The Paper and Stick Film”- which is apparently quite a fascinating thing to watch. He has a link to purchase this from his website, but it still seems to be a non-functioning link. (The minute this becomes available I’m buying it!)

It looks like he updated his site with some more photos of his patents and some additional historical photos of things he has worked on, too, so if you’ve been to the site before I suggest visiting it again.

Tom Hull talked a good bit about Resch at the Origami USA convention this year, and really intrigued me to look further into his designs. Only recently have I started exploring 3D tessellations myself, and so seeing his innovative thoughts from way back when is really an eye-opener for me.

One thing that really hit me today as I was looking at his site (yet again) was this curving folded piece, made up of out pleats. I like the way it captures an essence- flight, perhaps, or maybe something a bit more ethereal than that.

Sometime soon I need to make a pilgrimage up to Vegreville in Alberta, Canada to see his giant Easter Egg, made for the large Ukrainian community on the High Prairies to celebrate their heritage. There’s some more information about that on his site as well, which is worth looking at. Do a google search for it too, you won’t regret it.

-Eric

Update 2012: As Ron Resch has passed away, his website has fallen into the hands of domain scavengers – so I’ve removed the links to the content. If it reappears somewhere else in the future I will re-link.