A short 3-day workshop at the Łódź University of Technology with a fantastic outcome. Together with 17 students, we managed to do some interesting exercises and build a 1.9m tall beast from half millimetre thick card paper. As evident in the diagrams, the beast was designed and modelled as a cluster of polyhedra, and then a series of scripts were applied to make it curved-foldable.
Apart from how strong it was structurally (at least to support itself), there were two interesting outcomes of the workshop: In continuing the lineage of curved folding (previously here and here), this prototype proved that curved folded polyhedra can be aggregated to form more complex structures (albeit to a limited extent).
Secondly, it never fails to amaze me how nicely this shape lends itself to fabrication and quick assembly: this piece took about 5 hours of laser cutting time and a further 5 hours to fold, glue and assemble together; and all this by a group of 17 students who had never done any form of curved folding before.
Credits:
Anetta Kepczynska-Walczak | Assistant Professor, Łódź University of Technology, Poland
Sebastian Bialkowski | Doctoral Candidate, Łódź University of Technology, Poland
Suryansh Chandra | Senior Designer, ZHA | Code, London
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| The Design Intention |
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| The Design Process |
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| The LaserCut Pieces Arrive in the Studio |
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| The Folding Assembly Line |
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| Because Folding is so much Fun :) |
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| Uhu it Up: Gluing the Pieces that form a single Polyhedron |
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| Parallel Processing: Each Polyhedron could be Assembled with a Small Team of Just 2 or 3 |
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| Completed First Polyhedron |
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| Being a Sunday, we Hogged the Entire Corridor of our Floor to Setup our Assembly Line |
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| Joining the first two Polyhedra |
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| Edges Lineup Well |
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| Some Narrow Edges Weren't Conducive to being Folded too Sharply |
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| The Base Coming Together |
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| The Lower Half Forming the Base and the Feet done |
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| The Base and one of the Polyhedrons of the Crown. The Leftovers from the Laser Cutter made into Wall Art on the Left. |
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| A Keystone Piece Locks Everything Together |
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| Alignment Checks |
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| SuperLight: One of the Advantages of Paper |
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| Almost there: The Crown Being put into Place |
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| All done: The Entire Team |
Thanks to everyone involved for making this possible and finishing up with such an astonishing outcome in just 3 short days, and to the avid photographers for documenting the entire workshop and taking the pictures you see above. A special thanks to Anetta and Sebastian for all their hard work, time and working relentlessly to make sure everything went smoothly, and all the things we took for granted.
I am curious to see how long this piece stands against the brutality of moisture and curious human beings, which over time will soften and distort the paper eventually buckling and deforming.
