Origami induced Digital Architecture.

Research Paper: October 28, 2019

CITATIONS
0

1 author:

Aqsa Fatima
2016-ARCH-41
University of Engineering and Technology

All content following this page is written by Aqsa Fatima on October 28, 2019
ABSTRACT:
In this era of E-Libraries most people tend to read books on their phones instead of going to
the libraries for that purpose, so rather than creating huge concrete structures which won’t
even be used and adding them to create a concrete jungle in our environment, this research
intends to provide an open environment for learning by using deployable structures,
inspired from the art of origami. Also, it will be designed in a garden to provide the visitors
with a relaxed and nature friendly environment to study and to interact with one another.
One of the major findings of this research is to understand the workability of origami
induced architecture where these semi-covered structures like ‘Pavilions’ will be responsive
to their environment and hence, they can change in their form according to the need.
Furthermore, it deals with the methods and technologies (softwares like Rhino and
Grasshopper) that could be used for the designing and installation of such structures.

KEY WORDS:
Origami Architecture, Folding Structures, Dynamic Facades, Responsive Architecture.

INTRODUCTION: with other human beings in an open

Most of our youth is in the habit of
reading books and studying digitally just
because they prefer the cozy and relaxed
environment of their houses and won’t
waste their time in going to a library
where nothing but the same boring
environment awaits them with scary rules
of silence and no food allowed, which
ultimately results in empty libraries having
huge concrete structures with no use at
all. Also, human mind needs a healthy and
calm environment to learn and to
understand something which cannot be
accomplished by staying inside a
boundary of walls, as learning is not only
limited to the books we read, rather we
learn maximum when we interact with
others and share our knowledge with
each other. Now, to provide all such
experiences and a healthy learning
environment a design is required, where
people won’t be restricted to the written
knowledge of books inside a building but
they will also have a chance to interact
environment and learn from their
experiences. So, considering all these
points this project is based on the study of
deployable structures having multi-
purpose quality in their design. It means
that these structures won’t solely have
the purpose of reading associated with
them rather they could be used in many
other interactive activities.
And most importantly the research of this
project is about how we can design
portable structures (Pavilions) by
following the folding pattern used in the
art of origami, so that we can save our
environment from unnecessary concrete
structures having a permanent impact on
our built environment. They will be
designed in such a way that the whole
structures will compose of many different
units that could be assembled or
disassembled anytime according to the
need of the users and if at some point in
future the site is needed for any different
purpose these structures would have this
tendency to be removed from the site
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anytime and assembled at some different
place to benefit the users to their
maximum potential.
LITERATURE REVIEW:
The process of learning is not just about
the stuff we read in the books but is highly
effected by the surrounding environment
in which we are siting. Several recent
studies show that better learning grounds
including landscape elements help
improve the overall process of
understanding and can also result in
better behavior, increases focus and even
reduces bullying in the students. There
are many important sayings of the writers
as well that emphasize on the importance
on the importance of incorporating nature
in any learning environment.
‘When the atmosphere encourages
learning, the learning is inevitable.’
-Elizabeth Foss
Normally it is thought that the only sense
used in our studying or learning is the
sense of sight but we forget about all the
other external factors affecting our mind
and hence impact on our overall
performance. This process can be better
understood by the triangle of learning. It
shows us the importance of our senses in
the act of learning.
AUDITORY_ it registers the sound that
creates awareness of spatial information
around us and also deals with our
experience that relate to sound in any
way. VISION_ it acts as a warning system
that alerts us to the movement within our
visual field and helps us in responding to
any sudden change immediately without
delay. VESTIBULAR_ it registers
movement and anchors us in place and
also incorporates movement information
with all our senses.
Understanding the importance and role of
all our senses in act of learning, there are
many such activities that enhance our
learning by stimulying our brain cells.
Origami art is one of those many activities
that helps in improving our brain’s ability
to understand something and focus on it
more appropriately. A recent article
entitled “Boost your Brain Health”
discussed things we can do to keep our
brain healthy as we age. Origami is one
avenue that provides both mental and
physical stimulus with exercise. It helps us
to develop hand to eye coordination, fine
motor skills and mental concentration.
Use of the both hands at the same time
directly stimulates areas of the brain like
central hemispheres. It is also used in
various therapeutic settings, including art
therapy and in stroke and injury
rehabilitation. Along with all these
qualities the folds used in the art of
origami can also help us in generating very
interesting forms of architecture. Few of
the most important attributes associated
with the art of origami include strength,
flexibility and dynamism. All of these
qualities also link with architecture and so
my design will be based on these qualities
of origami to come up with something.
Now, the first basic thing when we talk
about origami are its basic folds that are
used in the process of converting any 2-
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Dimensional Surface into a 3-Dimesional
object.
All the basic folds used in the art of
origami and responsible for the strength
of any form are shown in the image
below.
Using these simple folds many intricate 3-
D forms could be generated. And slightest
variation in these folds can result in
completely different designs. The image
attached below is the perfect
representation of the use of these folds in
generating completely different forms.
Blue, pink, green, orange, yellow and
black colors are representing flexibility of
Reverse fold, Miura fold, Yoshimura,
Waterbomb, Diagonal and Curved folds
respectively.
As we discussed earlier, that the
architecture resulting from this art of
paper folding has many benefits to it. This
is due to a few characteristics of the folds
themselves,
_These folds can be dealt as different
single components & produced in the
form of assembling or disassembling
elements which makes it easy to install on
site.
_Furthermore, these folds are rigid
enough to create self-stable architecture,
which results in reducing the effort of
construction along with less
reinforcement required in the materials
used for construction and this ultimately
reduces the cost of that project.
And these qualities of the folds are going
to be incorporated in the design to
improve the efficiency of the project.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:
Main intuition of this project is to break
the boring and restricted nature of our
libraries within a closed boundary of walls
and to introduce an interactive space of
learning with every other facility that our
youth needs while they are studying. This
project with include spaces for the
general public of all age-group. Families
could come with their children and all of
them will have exercises according to
their age to learn from them or they can
simply sit in a nature friendly environment
to read books of their choice or to have
group study sessions without any
restrictions that are to be followed in
particular libraries.
DESIGN PROCESS:
Digital softwares of modern age provide
great deal of help in such architectural
designs where we can’t get precise results
through manual techniques. In digital
origami ‘Rhino’ is the software mostly
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used to design the folding architecture. It
uses the plugin of ‘Grasshopper’ to design
the logarithms used for the working of
such intricate designs with complexity.
The software almost works on the same After designing and modification of the
principles of paper origami but in a more module comes the most important step
precise manner. Now the basic form where it is actually transformed in some
selected from the art of origami for this sort of architectural form. Given below is
project is Hexaflexagon. In origami ‘hexa- the mesh population of the module using
flexagon’ is one of the most important two different softwares, mesh is
form of folding a paper into a ‘moving generated on Rhino and then
hexagon’. The concept behind this folding Grasshopper is used for the population.
of paper is that it should be folded in such The purpose behind this population is to
a way that the hexagon once formed by it understand various different possibilities
will keep moving forever. This endless of module repetition.
motion of origami hexaflexagon is termed
as “timelessness”. Similarly, the process of
learning has no end to it, it goes on
forever till you die.
The given geometry is then populated
2-D FORMATION BY HAND _ firstly it was
with the help of above definition of
made manually to understand the folds
grasshopper
and working of the module.

3-D FORMATION BY RHINO _ From above

concept of 2-D formation, it was
converted to a 3-D form which rotates
around its axis and provides different
openings.

These are some of the 3D-Views of the

designed module on Rhino and then that
module is modified by slight changes in
the variables and using some rotation and
stretch technique.

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After the module population ‘Master Plan’
was developed based on the concept of
the research work. The morphed shape
we got from the module and research was
randomly placed on the selected site.
While selecting the site for this project
many different aspects were studied
according to the requirements and needs
of the project. And after the proper
selection of site the spaces were deduced
from shapes generated through that
random placement of module.
After that the forms were derived from
that master plan and were modified
accordingly, so that they could fulfil the
purpose of the project and can be
converted into digital forms generated
through Rhino and Grasshopper.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
Hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
Hemispheres. It is also used in various
therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.
Hemispheres. It is also used in various
5|Page
therapeutic settings, including art therapy Hemispheres. It is also used in various
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation. therapeutic settings, including art therapy
and in stroke and injury rehabilitation.

LITERATURE REVIEW:
In old times, origami was just considered as a sequence of folding on some random lines and
was referred as something anonymous, not as something made up by a specific person,
devised by a specific method or technique. But in modern age, origami is based on such
paradigm that is completely different from the standards of old age. Now the folding
sequences of different patterns in origami are termed as “models” and the designers of
these miniatures are known by the name of “origami creators.”
The basic origami folds include valley and mountain folds, pleats, reverse folds, squash folds,
and sinks. These are very limited types of folds, but they can be combined in a variety of
ways to make intricate designs. The miura fold is one type of a flat fold rigid origami model,

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which consists of a combination of basic folds and has a strong resistance in one direction
and a weak resistance in the other. [ CITATION Dav11 \l 1033 ]

And the flexibility of the above described folding techniques allow us for an infinite number
of variations to be created by simple modification and manipulation in the crease patterns.

In above image blue, pink, green, orange, yellow and black colors are representing flexibility

of Reverse fold, Miura fold, Yoshimura, Waterbomb, Diagonal and Curved folds respectively.

The process of folding a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional, sculptural object

involves three important aspects for the architectural design, production and performance.
First of all, folding paper represents a classical design technique to build geometric models,
which can be seen as an extension of dimensions from the two-dimensional sketching to a
three-dimensional modeling. In that respect folding as a generative process in architectural
design is highly experimental, non-linear and process orientated. Its spatial, structural and
organizational diagrams give insight into new possibilities of unexpected outcomes.
Secondly folding is an effective and material-efficient production process, which results in a
structural model that can support itself due to the stability of its folds and can as well be
unfolded to enable the production of single parts from flat panels for the intended building
or product.

In that respect the morphogenetic process of folding results in a highly adaptive and
performative design model that provides a high degree of freedom for the designer.
Architectural concepts that take into account the parameters of construction and
manufacturing as well as the spatial qualities of these folding strategies are often based on a
highly integral approach as shown in the project for the Yokohama terminal by Foreign
Office Architects from 2002 [ CITATION Dav11 \l 1033 ]

WHY BRING ORIGAMI IN ARCHITECTURE?

Folding a 2D plane into a 3D object has some important aspects with reference to design,
production and extent of its performance. First of all, paper folding provides us with a
design technique or methodology to generate geometrical models but this process of
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generative design is completely based on ‘hit and trial’ method. Second comes the
production of those designs in an efficient manner. As we discussed earlier, that the
architecture resulting from this art of paper folding has many benefits to it. Like, the process
of production of folding architecture is very effective as well as material-efficient form of
construction. This is due to a few characteristics of the folds themselves,
_These folds can be dealt as different single components and produced in the form of
assembling or disassembling elements which makes it easy to install on site.
_Furthermore, these folds are rigid enough to create self-stable architecture, which results
in reducing the effort of construction along with less reinforcement required in the
materials used for construction and this ultimately reduces the cost of that project.
Third but most important aspect is the performance and adaptability of this form of
architecture. There are many of the origami techniques in which the overall shape can
undergo a kinetic transformation but still maintains the stability of it’s from. As, in some
cases the physical parameters of these designs react to their external factors and modify
their internal folds in order to achieve the best possible and balanced form. This shows, the
adaptability level of these folds with reference to their environment.

Furthermore, in designing phase of these intricate structures one must consider the aspect
of their proper assembling and how the joints or connection between different folds of
these structures could be made stronger, as the whole integrity of this form of architecture
depends upon the strong connections between their joints. If a single joint in the design fails
to have the strength required for it, the whole structure can collapse due to this minor
detail ignored while designing.

Different types of connections and their relative strength used in modular origami are
discussed below,
Side to Side _ these are the strongest of all connections but still different parameters can
further improve the integrity of these joints and they will provide maximum strength.
Conner to Corner _ these connections are on the intermediate level with reference to the
strength of their joints and are accustomed of having some stability issue in the design.
Corner to Side _ these connections should be avoided as much as possible, as these will be
the connections, most probably responsible for many design failures in the near future.

Many of the Architects have already designed some famous structures inspired from this art
of origami. Some of those existing designs and their performance is discussed below in
order to understand their workability, so that we can think of some new algorithms to
improve the performance of this interesting form of architecture by using various different
softwares.
AL BAHAR TOWERS _ they are designed on the
concept of modular architecture. A triangular
module is populated and used as building fabric on
the façade. And every single one of those
triangular modules has set parameters to have
dynamism.
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The fabric can sense the external factors of environment like wind, sun & responds to them
by the ratio of the opening provided by the modules.
Figure 1. AL BAHAR TOWERS
ORIGAMI PAVILION _ it was designed by Tal Friedman. The project
is inspired from the folds of origami and is
designed out of rigid aluminum boards. Due to the
intricate form and having many folds incorporated
in the design, it is a self-supporting structure. This
project resulted in a novel approach of
constructing thin-shelled foldable and self- Figure 2. ORIGAMI PAVILION
supporting structures in architecture.

DIGITAL SOFTWARES:
Digital softwares of modern age provide great deal of help in such architectural designs
where we can’t get precise results through manual techniques. In digital origami the ‘Rhino’
is the software mostly used to design the folding architecture. It uses the plugin of
‘Grasshopper’ to design the logarithms used for the working of such intricate designs with
complexity.

The software almost works on the same principles of paper origami but in a more precise
manner. Given below is a practical try on Rhino to generate some different types of
architectural designs from the folds of origami.

BY HAND _ firstly it was made manually to understand the folds and working of the module.

BY RHINO _then after understanding the phenomena it was converted on the digital

software.

These are some of the 3D-Views of the designed module on Rhino and then that module is
modified by slight changes in the variables and using some rotation and stretch technique.

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TOP VIEW 3-D VIEW TOP VIEW 3-D VIEW TOP VIEW 3-D VIEW

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After designing and modification of the module comes the most important step where it is
actually transformed in some sort of architectural form. Given below is the mesh population
of the module using two different softwares, mesh is generated on Rhino and then
Grasshopper is used for the population. The purpose behind this population is to
understand various different possibilities of module repetition. Each of the modified module
is populated one by one in such a GRASSHOPPER
way that each one of them could PLUGINS

create different patterns on their

repetition on the designed mesh of GEOMETRY

Rhinoceros.

After understanding the system of population on the grasshopper it was further explored to
better understand a one unit folding structure in architecture. The structures like pavilions
than could be installed or removed from the site as per their need. The working done on
grasshopper for that purpose is given below for two different designs.

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CONCLUSION:

Based on the study of all the existing work available in this field of architecture and with the
practical research conducted with the help of softwares, I can say that there is a huge scope
for this architectural style if our architects decide to invest their time in generating such
structures that will break the increasing trend of harsh dominance of concrete structures.
But it has to be done carefully as along with all the benefits of converting origami into
architecture it also attains some of its own drawbacks. Like, a minor negligence in the design
phase can cause a total failure of the structure, as all of this style is dependent upon the
connectivity and strength of its joints. Although if one can come up with a creative idea and
is able to transform that idea to an actual 3-D form than the experience of these foldable
structures can’t be compared to any of our fixed architectural style.
Having a lot of its own charms there are some limitations to it as well. While working on the
softwares I had faced some difficulty in converting some particular paper models to their
respective architectural designs. As all of this methodology is based on hit and trial method.
You can never be sure, if a particular manual model can be converted to a similar responsive
architectural structure. One might not be able to find the solutions to his problems
anywhere on the internet, all that can be done is to explore the software on your own by
changing the parameters and introducing new plugins and you will be amazed to see the
results when you are able to come up with some solution and then the software will give
you thousands of options by just a slight change in the parameters set for that model.
Also, the system once generated with the help of grasshopper has a huge benefit to it as it
can used in countless ways. We can simply change the geometry or plane assigned to the
system and the software will provide you with a totally different model that can be modified
further in many ways simply by the change in parameters.

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(n.d.).

Baba, M. (2010). Creating Digital Model Of Origami Crane through Recognition of Origami States
from Image Sequence. 3.

Hemmerling, M. (n.d.). Digital folding stratagies in architecture. Origamics, 8.

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Kong, M. S. (2014). Paper Folding And Digital Systems: A new approach to architectural logic and
structural design., (p. 6). Libson.

Leounis, D. L. (2011). Digital Origami: Modeling Planar Folding Structures. Parametricism, 5.

Poala, M. B. (2016). Origami- Inspired Smart Building Skin. (p. 10). DOI.

Turner, N. (2015). A Review Of Origami and its Application in Engineering.

Weinand, H. B. (2014). Folded Plate Structures, Architecture. ORIGAMI, 8.

Zhou, L. (2018). Paper Origami - Inspired Design and Actuation of DNA nanomachines with Complex
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