Origami Castle Explorations

And so castles made of sand fall to the sea eventually.

Forget what I said about the nice weather. We had a beautiful weekend but it’s been raining for four days straight now. Also it turns out that that plant in our yard is a mountain laurel, not a rhododendron. Ah well. To top it off there’s been more turmoil at the office the last few weeks, culminating in my boss, a VP of technology, resigning yesterday. And so it goes.

After I designed my origami tower I realized I could combine several towers on one sheet to form a castle. And so I’ve been experimenting in that direction. I came up with a bunch of prototypes with several successful layouts. The first was what I’m now calling the Grand Castle. The idea was to have one large central tower surrounded by a wall with four smaller towers at the corners. Once I started folding it I realized that I would also have a tower in the center of each edge wall, resulting in a total of nine towers. These middle towers would be rectangular rather than square and I would have to work out how to finish them. So I made a second version, called the Armory. It’s a single block of a building with four towers in a square with no central tower. This one seemed promising so I tried a few layouts with different proportions. The third one is called the Classic Castle. It consists of six towers in two groups. In the front is a gatehouse flanked by two small towers. In the back is a keep consisting of a large tower with a hall on each side. In between is a central courtyard.

This seems like maybe the best layout, but a lot of work to fold. So I went with the Armory to do as an exhibit-level model because it’s alot less complicated. Also I found it’s symmetry appealing, and thought it’d easier to finish neatly. Once I began I realized the base itself would make a really nice tessellation.

Now I’m thinking I can combine the castle technology with some ideas from the Origami from Space series to create all kinds of domes and spires, and virtually any kind of architectural structure. I have my plate full for this year, but look for more of this stuffs for the 2010 exhibition.

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