Here’s a PDF of my Bauhaus Foundation course handout from 2017; it’s been sitting here on my computer for months now and it seems high time to share it. This is all based on my research into the preliminary course / foundation course work of Josef Albers, and the folding exercises he taught his students at both the Bauhaus and the Black Mountain College in Asheville, NC. It’s a few simple models, including the Hypar (as shown above), a herringbone corrugation pattern, a basic Floderer-esque crumpling piece, and a pleated wave (from Goran Konjevod). We touched on more work during our course but these needed the most instruction, so they were diagrammed. All that being said, I vastly prefer to walk students through folding, crumpling, and cutting things by hand without instructional sheets – I don’t want them to just follow a handout and duplicate what they see. I want them to experience the process and think about it so they may find new ways of doing it in their own style. They are …

      Hello All, Here are some newly created diagrams for perhaps my only “easy” origami model, a simple fan made from an A4-sized sheet of paper. I’m quite fond of this little fan, it uses a unique method of radial pleating to create a very useable result! As with all of my diagrams, these are released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License, which allows you to share them and re-use them with appropriate attribution and sharing. (Find out more on Creative Commons licenses) Download the PDF diagrams here, and feel free to share them with others! Additionally, if you want to take this model up a notch in style and complexity, divide the paper into 16ths instead of 8ths, and it will make a more pleasing curved fan and a skinnier handle as well. For more advanced folders only! I hope you enjoy this model as much as I do. Eric

This post comes from my partner, Ioana Stoian, and is one of the 16 models we’ve been working on (and that I’ve been diagramming) for her upcoming book, “Origami for All: Elegant Designs from Simple Folds“, to be published sometime in the next few months. I really enjoy the models she creates, as they are all “pureland” origami, although just by coincidence… very elegant, simple models, which she folds out of her handmade paper. Our house is filled with these creations and I feel like my tessellation work is now outnumbered! From her website: Seeing as Valentine’s day is just around the corner, I can’t think of a better time to share my simple heart origami model with you. It should be rather easy to fold even if you have no paperfolding experience. Just take your time and follow the diagrams carefully.The simple heart is one of the models that will be included in my upcoming origami book, which should be available for purchase in the next few months. Please feel free to send me your comments. …

I participate in several web forums on origami, and recently in one of them someone asked questions about tips for folding square & triangular grids. Being somewhat of a specialist on the subject, I posted these thoughts: Hi,well, nobody necessarily likes pre-creasing grids, including me. So you’re not alone there. However, I think it’s important to think of it more as a meditative process, and instead of as a chore; it’s a task which you must do to fold a model, and it is, to some extent, an integral part of the model, so it’s worth taking the time to do it well and not rush through it to “get it out of the way”.As others have mentioned to you, if things are getting too small, you need to use larger paper. Also, and perhaps equally as relevant, you should be using better paper… higher quality paper will yield much better results from the same folding process, and is much more likely to give you a better looking result while also giving you less headache …

I’ve been working on this piece for the last month or so; it’s a huge version of my Dragon Helix design. I first started folding this pattern years ago, creating a 6 meter long strip of folded paper for it. Sadly it was from Tyvek, which turned out to be too soft to fold properly, and the entire thing was a loss. Ever since then I have wanted to fold it correctly, and realize it in full form. This work will be on display at the Salon Resonance[s], a large art exhibition in Strasbourg, France on November 9-12 of this year. It will be at least 10 meters long for the exhibition space, potentially longer. I just hope my hands will hold out! It’s been more than a kilometer of creasing done so far. I enjoy playing with my art while folding; here’s a photo of me that I just had to share with everyone. It seems to be a trend for me these days to always wear my origami on my head…   here …