(c) Crease Pattern of the Alphabet: Dark lines are mountain folds; light lines are valley folds; bold lines delineate letter boundaries and are not folds.

(c: Crease Pattern) folds into (b: 3D extrusion), which is an extrusion of (a: 2D maze)

I went to Boston, MA two weeks ago to visit some friends and on my way to the bus station back to New York, I stopped by the MIT Museum to check out what inventive exhibits and ideas were on display. After being awe-struck by Arthur Ganson’s Gestural Engineering exhibit, I wandered to the Toy Product Design section and saw Sho Mi Origami. It is a toy that projects origami instructions onto origami paper. You begin by selecting a project disk, and the disk rotates inside the toy, which advances to the next instruction stop. What a great way to recreate a new toy(Sho Mi Origami) with an classic “toy”(Origami)!

Toy Product Design
Toy Project Design is an MIT class created in 2005 by Barry Kudrowitz and Professor David Wallace. It is a hands-on, project-based introduction to product design processes and techniques with an emphasis on designing for play and entertainment.

Here we have an origami spoon by designer Michael Sholk which is bent from one piece of material comprised of paper, plastic, and silver foil.  

And lastly, check out out how origami lends some inspiration to Italian architects in creating this Automobile Museum in Nanjing, China.

p.s. Between the Folds Film is now on DVD. With the purchase of 4 or more DVDs, you’ll receive an original origami butterfly, handfolded by one of the film’s featured artists, Michael LaFosse. 

Earlier this year in the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) together with the University of Tokyo and metal manufacturer Castem created nine origami space shuttles to launch into space! The 29-gram origami shuttle, which measures 38 centimeters long and 22 centimeter wide, are made from lightweight sugar cane fiber paper that has been chemically treated to resist heat and water. The prototype performed successfully, surviving through wind speeds of Mach 7 (8,600 kph) and temperatures of around 200 degrees celsius or 392 degrees fahrenheit.

At this time, plans will not go ahead to launch as measures to prevent the craft from colliding with satellites were insufficient.

Vanessa Gould’s highly anticipated Between the Folds film is set to debut this Friday at the Temecula International Film Festival and again on Sunday. Here’s a sneak peek of the film.

Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist who told the same story 99 different ways and Exercices de Style is a lab that makes a bold attempt to apply the same idea, but in fashion design. A recent project called Walking City was a study on modular structures of a garment and seeks out how fashion arts and technology are to be intertwined.

TED which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design is an invitation-only event where the world’s leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration. Robert Lang, a world renowed origami master was invited to speak at this exclusive event about our favorite subject – origami! He shared with the audience why and how the structures developed in origami have major applications in medicine, science, space, and consumer electronics. It is an idea and video worth spreading!

Between the Folds work-in-progress screening will be at the August 2008 Rhode Island International Film Festival. Written and Directed by Vanessa Gould, she helps initiate a dialogue about this mysterious and misunderstood art with the guidance of ten renowned origami masters.

If you are in Rhode Island August 6 and 7th, GO GO GO already! I just saw the YouTube preview and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! Oh! and I forgot to add…since I love facebook, you should also join their groupie!

The film will be completed by the end of August 2008.

Inspired by Furoshiki which is a big sheet of cloth which wraps various sized items, Japanese design firm Keita and Naoyo Seto created The Role of Hand, a laptop case holder. And since I live the origami life, I picked one up for myself at the Los Angeles boutique Tortoise Life.

New York-based artist and interaction designer JooYoun Paek created a musical play interface called Fold Loud which combines technology, origami, and sound to create an interactive experience of relaxation, recovery and balance.

While you fold classic origami bases from this unique sheet of paper, it simultaneously creates soothing harmonic vocal sounds. Each fold is assigned a different sound so that a combination of these folds create harmony. Click here to watch the video.