Tessellations have become very popular in origami. My first tessellation features all pentagons. It doesn't use pentagonal symmetry however, the underlying grid is square. The Cairo tessellation is an ancient pattern used in Moorish and Mideastern art and architecture for centuries.

A fantastic elephant with a castle on its back, ready to march into battle. It essentially combines two different models into one sheet of paper. Once I had the basic approach to the tower worked out, I folded quite a number of prototypes to work out the placement and proportion of the tower with respect to the elephant body. The design of the tower creates pleats that run to the edge of the sheet where I use them to form a fearsome array of tusks.

After I designed my origami tower I realized I could combine several towers on one sheet to form a castle. I came up with a bunch of prototypes with several successful layouts. The Armory is a square configuration with a large tower in each corner.

The cool thing about using a tessellation as a base is that it basically gives you a small square in the middle of your main square. The number, size and position of the small square can be manipulated, so it is very flexible. The first is the Grand Castle. It features a 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. A second version, called the Armory is a single block of a building with four towers in the corners and no central tower. The third, the Castle Keep, consists of six towers in two groups. In the front is a gatehouse flanked by two small guard. In the back is a a large tower with a hall on each side. In between is a central courtyard. 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 had the idea for some time to make an origami War Elephant, with a castle on its back, and maybe some bigger tougher tusks and other scary-looking armaments. The tower I had in mind had crenulated battlements ringing the top, and something resembling arches on the sides. The base is a tessellation. This simple tower has all the edges of the paper along the bottom of the tower, making it easy to embed it in a larger square.

I was hanging out with Won Park and came up with this as dollar challenge.

Perfect for Valentine's day, this whimsical insect is a variations on my butterfly where the wings form the shape of a heart. It started as an attempt to make a satisfying ladybug, with a color change for the wings and again for the spots. Unfortunately the basic body plan was too different. The legs ended up in the wrong place and the wings were the wrong shape. But I was able to use that approach here, so here you go.