Welcome to my first blog post! As I am currently doing an internship with the Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia this series of blog posts will provide updates about what I am working on here!
The focus of my internship here is to research, explore and learn how certain principles and properties of origami can be integrated into products to better them. This series will include bi-weekly updates starting now until the end of my internship here on August 16th, 2024. In this post, details about the work I have done over the past month of my internship will be covered.
Research
When initially introduced to the project, I spent some time re-familiarizing myself with the world of origami. Growing up, I used to love folding all kinds of animals and objects.
After feeling sufficiently re-introduced to the world of origami, I began to delve further into and read through research papers detailing some practical applications of origami. Here I discovered origami tessellations, which among other features, are repeated patterns folded onto a sheet of paper allowing it to fold compactly.
Some examples of their applications include the use of the Miura Ori tessellation for solar sails and the flasher pattern in NASA's Starshade. The use of tessellations seems to be popular in applications related to outer space due to the need to fit large pieces of equipment into small spaces.
Experimentation
Once I'd learned about tessellations, I started folding some of the common ones out of paper.
I then read a research paper that demonstrated ways in which the Resch tessellation was rearranged to create novel patterns. Inspired by this, I used Inkscape and origami simulator to recreate some of the patterns demonstrated in this paper and even tried creating some of my own.
Design Research
At this stage, I began looking at how origami was being applied in the world of industrial design. I gathered examples of products from around the internet then began to look for patterns in how origami was being utilized. I identified 4 main areas in which origami provided benefits to a product. Click on the dropdown menu below to learn more about and see examples of each benefit.
Strength
Portability
Sustainability
Deploy-ability
Developing a Design Brief
To synthesize all of this information and provide myself with a clear point of focus for this project, I then developed a design brief. The most crucial elements of this brief are outlined in this post. The full design brief is available below.
Project overview
Goals
To document, learn from, explore, and ultimately create a product that integrates origami principles, focusing on benefits such as increased strength, surface area, portability, and sustainability.
Focus area
Given the complexity and multifunctional nature of origami, I have narrowed the scope of my contributions to this project to primarily focus on the enhanced portability origami can provide.
Design overview
Objectives
Create a finished product model and concept integrating origami principles.
Identify potential implementation issues of origami principles.
Impact
Inspire designers to utilize origami principles.
Apply findings and learnings in future projects.
Existing product analysis
Products that integrate origami
Colours
Look and feel
Materials
Product features
Products that exhibit portability
Colours
Look and feel
Materials
Product features
Next steps
Within the next couple of weeks, I plan to start conceptualizing specific product ideas through sketching and low-fidelity prototypes.
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