This tiling is really just causing me mental anguish. I’m trying to find an elegant way to fold it, and it’s just not happening so far. (click the photo for a larger version) Totally open to suggestions or hints from crowd on this one. it’s really interesting looking, too… what I have folded so far is fascinating (to me, anyway). I’d really like to find a way to make it go the distance.

Here are two PDF documents, with square regions that have a triangular grid array on them. The grid is formed the same way that you would create one via precreasing, so it’s relatively similar to what you would see on a sheet of origami paper. The first one has a very large grid; the second one has a fine, small grid. both are useful, just for different things. These are newer versions, with the opacity of the grid lines turned down to only 20%; so hopefully if you draw on them with pencil or pen, your drawing will show up much more easily. The PDFs retain the layering and editing information, so if you also have a vector graphics program capable of editing such documents then feel free to tweak these to your heart’s content. download page. Released by Eric Gjerde Under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. Some Rights Reserved. www.origamitessellations.com

Ha-Ori Shelter From the SAFE: Design Takes on Risk exhibit at MoMA comes this wonderful folding structure called the “Ha-Ori Shelter”. Made by Joerg Student from IDEO, it looks much like a folding, tessellated ger (or yurt). Given that I’m fascinated by both of these topics, this little collapsible hut is very appealing. Here’s the quote from the IDEO page: Ha-Ori Shelter This ingenious and elegant temporary shelter was designed and constructed by IDEOer Joerg Student as a project for the Industrial Design Engineering program at the Royal College of Art in London. Stemming from Student’s exploration of a folding technique inspired by the leaves of a hornbeam tree, the Ha-Ori (Japanese for “folding leaf”) shelter is constructed from corrugated polypropylene that has been folded in a series of trapezoidal shapes to create a rigid structure. When open, the shelter has a diameter of 12.5 ft and a height of 8.5 ft. When folded, the Ha-Ori measures 8.8 ft x 1.5 ft for easy transport. See more items from the SAFE exhibit at Core77.com: Core77 …

I have been playing with an origami pattern design tool called ORIPA, made by Jun Mitani (his blog here). Once I figured out how to get it properly running on my Mac, it was pretty easy to figure out. here’s a handy tip for that. it needs latest java release 1.5.0; the mac still uses 1.4.2 by default, so you have to call the 1.5.0 version specifically to execute the runtime. I did this by stashing the jar file (the packed program file) in my origami directory, and created this shell script: #!/bin/sh /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Commands/java -jar ~/origami/oripa012.jar which I saved as /usr/local/bin/oripa on my machine; although you could just as easily save it to your desktop as a clickable icon. anyhow, that bit of stuff aside, I was having problems getting it to properly fold some of my hexagonal design right- but I had seen other files which were more complex and folded quite well. So I uploaded some simple examples to the upload board for ORIPA, and I saw today that Mitani-san had written some …

Sem Nome Avesso Originally uploaded by mawelucky. Jane says: A client of mine once saw me fill out an entry for his dog and put “Sem Nome” (nameless) at the name field (the db required it). He liked it so much that he named his dog “Sem Nome”… I’m as good as he is when naming things – any sugestions are welcome. it’s quite OK to just say “Sem Nome Tessellation #1” and stick with it! not everything has to have a name, really… sometimes it’s better to just be able to focus on the art, rather than try to figure out why someone named a piece a particular name. I personally like going to the art gallery and never looking at the little name cards- it doesn’t do anything other than tell me how to think about some piece of art, and I should be able to make that decision on my own. Jane has consistently been producing some amazing new origami artworks; I’m always happy to see something new from her show up …