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Abstract:Collapsible Origami is the field which invents and investigates folded forms
made from flat uncut sheets that can be squeezed into smaller 2D or 3D shapes and be
re-expanded, repeatably and reliably, in a single fluid movement. In this paper I
consider the effects of a fold-patterns symmetry and asymmetry on its collapsibility.
Symmetry tends to distribute compressive/tensile forces more evenly in a sheet: for
many purposes that is a good thing, but with excess equilibrium there is no clear
channel of release for these forces. So, introducing a single small asymmetry often aids
in compaction. That said, folding and unfolding are rarely the SOLE purpose of
collapsible origami. Often the sheet also has to unfold into a pretty shape, or compress
into a specific shape, or do something interesting as it unfolds, or work using rigid
hinged parts like steel (unlike paper which can flex), or compress only partway and
resist compression thereafter, or fold along curved lines which have a distinct logic of
their own, etc. For each of these varied requirements pattern and symmetrybut also
the breaking of symmetryare relevant. I illustrate this theme by considering a few
novel patterns of my own, as well as some famous cases.
compressible, deployable,
1. BACKGROUND
Origami, the art of making things by folding flat sheets without cutting,
is sometimes confused with pop-up art, which is about making things
that unfold into interesting shapes and then close back flatbut starting
from discrete elements, not a single continuous sheet. In the former, the
ultimate folded shape is smaller than the initial one (typically a square);
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in the latter, the resultant popped-up shape is larger. But there is also an
overlap between these two fields: collapsible origami, in which the form
that opens and closes is itself made from a single uncut sheet. The sheet
is scored or pre-folded typically with a pattern of alternating mountain
and valley folds, and it then opens and shuts in a systematic, repeatable
way in a single fluid movement. Probably the simplest and oldest such
shape is the paper fan, but collapsible origami is also to be found in
familiar objects like umbrellas and tents, as well as in ultramodern
deployable structures such as unfolding satellite panels and medical
stentsall situations where it is necessary to deliver a continuous surface
in a compact form to where or when it is needed and then have it unfurl
or unfold into a larger one, smoothly and reversibly.
This field is currently undergoing an explosion of interest. Aspects of it
have been in existence for decades, and possibly for centuries; but it has
recently begun to coalesce and to draw the attention of serious paperfold
artists as well as the physicists and engineers who study deployable
structures. Indeed the field is a natural point of contact between art and
science: and symmetry issues, I hope to show, are key to both. I will
focus primarily on the mechanical effect which adding asymmetry and
symmetry to a pattern has on collapsibility. To that end I will introduce
some collapsible origami designs of my own, alongside the discussion of
more familiar cases.
Collapsible Origami
Take this same pattern, drawn on a sheet the length of which is at least
2pi times its height. Such a fan can be opened all the way round, and then
two of its edges may be glued underneath to form a complete circular
fan. Can this shape be compressed? It can, if you break from the plane of
the circle, raising the center and squeezing the circumference into a sort
of cylinder. What about while keeping to the plane of the circle? No,
that will not work.
The following variation, however, will allow planar compression of a
circular fan. Instead of having the parallel folds of the fan be orthogonal
to the long edge of the rectangle, make these parallel folds slightly
skewed. Glue the edges as before. This will make a circular paper fan
with a small hole at its center (the hole being larger the greater the angle
of skew). And now the shape will compress laterally, just by pressure
from the sides. The hole at the center will wind up and simultaneously
the fans corrugations will close as they do normally in a spreadable fan.
In fact, with suitable paper the shape will also spring back open.
[Invented by the author, 2009.]
Why does this work, when it doesnt with the orthogonal pattern? In the
ordinary and more symmetrical shape the tensile forces are in dynamic
equilibrium: closing the fan edges in one direction increases the tension
in the other. This holds the shape in balance, but it also keeps all the
corrugations pointing straight toward the center, where they interfere
with each other if compression is attempted. With the skewed-angle
circular fan, there is (a) a hole at the center instead of a point, like the
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hole at the center of a vortex, so there is room for winding; (b) the
corrugations come in at an angle and so dont run into each other; and (c)
the upper parts of the corrugations have a single direction to bend in as
the shape compresses (again, rather like the spiral arms of a galaxy).
All this happened by taking a pattern that was too symmetric and
introducing a single asymmetry into it. The symmetry lends the shape
rigidity and helps it resist collapse; the slight skew opens a channel by
which these compressive and tensile forces can be released; there is only
one such channel, so the released forces do not interfere with each other.
A fine article by Taketoshi Nojima (Nojima, 2002) contains a collection
of images of known collapsible origami forms. This collapsible disk is
not in it, although others, made from disks instead of from an initial
rectangle, are. One observes that many of the forms shown there involve
slightly skewed angles with respect to a symmetrical (typically radial)
grid.
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But you can also make the pattern less symmetrical, preserving the signs
for the folds relative to the nodes but varying the angles of the zigzags.
Figure 3 shows some simple progressive deformations of the Miura-ori.
As each pattern becomes less and less symmetrical, it is reasonable to
inquire: can this sheet still be collapsed so that it is flat when folded?
Does it collapse as rigid origami? How does the altered symmetry affect
the mechanics of collapse/expansion? And how does it affect its beauty?
Figure 3. The Miura-ori and various simple permutations. (A) With sharper angles (which sometimes also are
considered Miuras); (B) with increasingly shallower angles in each row; (C) with randomly varying angles in
the zigzags; (D) with verticals no longer straight, but bending at the nodes.
I leave these questions for the reader to explore for himself. But I will
note that I have used an asymmetric Miura pattern in an application, one
of the flower-cards presented below.
It is surprising, at any rate, how robust this pattern is to various kinds of
deformation. Just what does one have to do to destabilize a Miura-ori?
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4. MIURA PREHISTORY
A few words are in order on the history of this pattern. Various writers
(e.g., Vincent, 2000; Mahadevan, 2005) have pointed out that something
like the Miura-ori has long existed in nature. For instance, the leaf of the
hornbeam plant has a zigzag pattern, and in opening its tip jumps forward
in the way that is characteristic of the expansion of the Miura-ori.
But not just in nature: also in art. On February 8, 2008, the origami and
fabric historian Joan Sallas posted to the Origami List (the main origami
forum on the internet) a reference to a painting made in 1535 by the
Italian master Agnolo Bronzino, of the aristocratic Lucrezia Panchiatichi
(Bronzino, 1535). In particular he pointed to Lucrezias collar, with its
unidentified pattern of curved foldspart of Sallas argument for the
antiquity in Europe of knowledge of curve-folding (Sallas, 2008). I
immediately reconstructed the pattern in paper. (It is amusing to reverseengineer an object from a painting made of it 500 years ago.) This let me
identify the basic pattern as fundamentally of the class of the Miura-ori,
with its characteristic zig-zags. The curviness of the edges of the zig-zag
results from the shape having been made from fabric rather than paper.
This pattern nevertheless varies from the regular Miura in that there are
two scales of the pattern, one at twice the size of the other, which
alternate with each other. What is interesting is that having these two
scales interferes with the complete collapse of each. (As the crease
pattern in Figure 4 shows, a square is necessarily formed in the handoff
between the two scales, and that square is bounded by folds of the same
signa configuration that prevents collapse.) The net result is that the
form functions like a spring, compressing partway but no further: exactly
what one wants in a collar of this kind.
This is perhaps a case where complicating the symmetry changes the
mechanical properties of the sheet with respect to collapse and
expansion. In any event, what it clearly shows is that not only was there
knowledge of a Miura-like pattern in the 16th century, but this knowledge
was quite advancedmore advanced in some respects than that which
exists today.1
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Figure 4: Agnolo Bronzino,1535, and the 2-scaled Miura reconstructed by the author. The paper
reconstruction uses only the folds visible in the painting and what they directly imply (e.g., a valley between
two mountains). The resultant pattern resists full collapse.
Collapsible Origami
any other shape; and so on. What I cannot dispute, however, is the
beauty of his results.
Figure 4: Ray Schamp, 3 degrees of pleat. According to Schamp, a new flat collapsible fold can be generated
from each predecessor state by a simple algorithm which can be applied indefinitely.
6. BLOOMING ORIGAMI
I became interested in the Miura-ori when setting myself the challenge of
designing pop-up cards using collapsible-origami flowers as elements. It
turns out that the pattern not only collapses flat, but does so equally well
when reflected symmetrically across one diagonalwhich also makes
the resultant shape appear somewhat floral. As the two corners are
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pulled out the flower grows right before your eyes, and when the
corners are pushed back the form shrinks reliably (also discussed in
Sternberg, 2009).
Figure 5: Pop-up flower cards, an application of Collapsible Origami. All flowers are folded from uncut
squares, each glued at two corners to the background card and activated by the card pulling and pushing at
those points. (A) Purple flowers are Miura fold variants; yellows are variants of the Preliminary Fold. (B)
Roses twist radially as they open. (C) Sunflowers rise, using a Miura principle, and then pivot forward, taking
a bow. (D) Bat-flower locks into a 3D shape as it opens.
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7. CURVES
I turn now to another area of interest in which the geometry and
symmetry of the folds affects compressibility and collapse: curve folds.
This is an exciting, relatively new field in origami, or, to be more
accurate, a field in which there have been relatively few pioneers and real
advances over the last 100 years but of which the public is finally now
becoming aware. More crucially, it is today drawing the analysis and
experimentation of first-rate paperfold and corrugation artists, people like
Polly Verity, Philip Chapman-Bell and Fernando Sierra. 2
Perhaps the most important thing to know about curved folding is that
when you put a curved crease in a sheet and begin to bend the paper
along itwhich causes the surfaces to curve toothose surfaces to
either side of the curved crease can never be brought flush to each other.
Geometry dictates that in order to have surfaces of a flat sheet be moved
by folding from an open state to a fully-flush closed state, the hinge has
to be a straight line, not a curved one (Fuchs and Tabachnikov, 1999]3.
This fact has immediate mechanical and aesthetic consequences: patterns
made of curved folds through single surfaces are always open. (Patterns
of straight folds may likewise be left open but it is rare that they are
forced to be such.) These open folds imbue a sheet with some
compressibility, but this can never be taken continuously all the way to a
state where two layers join to one surface, let alone become flat. The
dominant appearance of curved-fold origami is thus of one-layer thick
curving surfaces, joined by sinuous open folds.4
Another way to say this is that when the fold-lines are straight, an
investment of thought needs to be made (as we saw in the case of
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8. CONCENTRIC WINDER
Here is an interesting collapse-pattern that begins with a circular disk that
has concentric mountain-valley circles drawn on it, and no straight folds.
The pattern is not entirely symmetrical, as it requires a single radius cut.
(This fact may offend origami purists; but while some asymmetry cant
be avoided those averse to cutting may start instead with a semi-circle
and fold concentric semi-circles. It works just as well, though it does not
reopen to as large a shape.)
Slide one edge of the cut radius under the otherand continue to slide it.
The mountain-valley folds grow steeper, and the disk begins to shrink.
Keep on sliding itthe disk gets smaller and smaller.
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Collapsible Origami
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Figure 10: The Albers effect: an uncut disk with folded concentric mountain-valley folds deforms into a
saddle-shape. The Concentric Winder be used to demonstrate the exact point at which this contorted shape
emerges from a flat-on-average state.
Why does this happen? Once paper has been scored and folded
concentrically it has been given a springiness; this pulls the edge circle
and indeed each of the interior circles toward the center. In effect, then,
the radius of each of these circles has been shrunk; but meanwhile its
circumference has not. This excess circumference can be accommodated
only if the circles twist out of the plane, settling into a saddle shape.
It should be noted that saddle formation of this kind is by no means an
exclusive property of concentric folds: the laws that C = 2!r and A = !r2
is just one of many that relate lines to lines and lines to areas in the plane,
and when any of these expected relations for a flat surface are not met, a
sheet will be forced to break from the plane, typically in origami either in
the direction of a cone or in that of a saddle. (See Sharon, 2004, for a
discussion of how a sheet deforms under differential growth.) Folders of
other curve patterns and even of open-fold straight corrugations, which
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Figure 10: Organic Form, by Saadya, 2009. The pattern consists of half concentric, half straight parallel
corrugations, which are mediated by a zigzag. W hen collapsed it bulges into a surprising shape.
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Figure 12: An uncut circle with a concentric fold pattern being folded into a ball. Invention by Saadya, 2009.
12. CONCLUSION
I have painted a small and very partial picture of this emerging field of
Collapsible Origami, yet hopefully enough of one to show some of the
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charm it holds for artists, geometers and engineers. There is still room
today for the simplest, most elementary of discoverieseven for
reinventing the wheel. Meanwhile there are technical and mathematical
challenges enough to satisfy any engineers appetite for complexity.
Asymmetry and symmetry are key to the successful mechanical operation
of these folds which open and collapse, sometimes in subtle and
unexpected ways. Analysing a pattern, asking which of its aspects
contributes to or impedes its function, adds to or detracts from its beauty
and surprise, and then varying these one by oneseeing what happens
that is the essence of artistic experimentation, here as anywhere; but as
this is origami it can also be done by anyone within reach of the nearest
scrap of paper.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to the anonymous reviewer for many helpful suggestions.
REFERENCES
Bronzino, Agnolo, Lucrezia Panchiatichi, painted ca. 1535. Image is in the public
domain worldwide.
Demaine, Erik, http://erikdemaine.org/curved/history , first posted 2008.
Fuchs, D, and Tabachnikov, S, More on Paperfolding, American Mathematical
Monthly, vol 106, no 1, Jan 1999, pp. 27-35.
Mahadevan, L. and Rica, S. Self-Organized Origami, Science 18 March 2005: Vol.
307. no. 5716, p. 1740.
Miura, Koryo, Map Fold a La Miura Style, Its Physical Characteristics and Application
to the Space Science, Research of Pattern Formation, ed. R. Takaki, KTK Scientific
Publishers, pp. 77-90. Paper first presented at the First International Meeting of Origami
Science and Technology, Ferrara, Italy, December 6-7, 1989.
Nojima, Taketoshi, Origami Modeling of Functional Structures based on Organic
Patterns, Dept. of Engineering Science, Graduate School of Kyoto University, Sakyoku, Kyoto, Japan, 2002.
Sallas, Joan, series of postings to the Origami-List, an origami forum on the Internet,
subject line History of Curved Origami Sculpture, Feb. 8, 19, 25, 2008.
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Polly
Verity,
http://www.polyscene.com
;
Philip
Chapman-Bell,
http://origami.oschene.com ; Fernando Sierra, http://www.flickr.com/photos/elelvis. It
honors me to have their respect as well.
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A curved crease can also be put through two layers of paper instead of one, or through
a sheet folded over itself along a straight segment, and then there will be the option of
bending one layer as a mountain fold while leaving the other intact. Indeed, as has been
recognized, this sometimes weakly locks the surface into its curving shape (and is called
by some in the origami world a tension-fold). Such a process will make it seem as
though on one side of the sheet there is a closed fold: a seam line instead of a
continuous open valley.
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In 2006, while working on those spiral or vortex-like curve-folds (see e.g. Figure 6;
discussed further in Sternberg, 2006) I was curious whether the visual similarity of
individual spiral units to certain galaxies was superficial or whether the analogy went
deeper. Vortexes after all are things that pull all material in them toward a center,
whether in paper or in space. I was then in Boston, so I asked Brian Chan known in
the origami world as a champion of complex origami, but then also getting a degree
from MIT in fluid mechanicswhat a vortex is, as his field sees it. His answer: a
perfect vortex is not, as is sometimes thought, a spiral that winds toward a center, but
rather a series of concentric circles. So it is of special interest that the origami pattern
that turns out to allow infinite compressibility of a sheet is a set of concentric circles
rather than the spirals as originally believed. And indeed, if you think of the points
along the circumference of these circles, they are increasing in density with each
winding (here not by compaction but by the addition of layers); and meanwhile the
circles themselves are also being drawn closer to the center. I cant conceive of any
other curve pattern that would accomplish this in as orderly a fashion.
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