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Curved-Crease Sculpture

185 points

by wonger_

12 days ago

| past

| 13 comments

| erikdemaine.org

| HN

https://erikdemaine.org/curved/history/

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hokumguru

12 days ago

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Eric Demaine is one of the better intersections of origami and mathematics, you should also read up on Dr Robert Lang, the OG and perhaps the most famous American JPL-physicist-turned-origamist: https://langorigami.com/

On the flip side the late Eric Joisel created perhaps the most amazing curved-crease and natural folding that we’ll ever see, his works were truly amazing art: https://ericjoisel.fr/en/home/

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jmspring

11 days ago

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Looking at Lang's site, yes it is a super niche area, but there is a lot of self promotion - books, events, etc. I was first introduced to the general area of curved crease, etc was with David Huffman in the early 90s. He started that work in the early 70s. So, Lang proclaims to the the first, but salesmanship is important.

Eric himself reconstructs some of huffman's work - https://erikdemaine.org/papers/Huffman_Origami5/paper.pdf

It's an interesting area.

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frakt0x90

12 days ago

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In addition to being great artists, I also learned dynamic programming from this guy via his outstanding lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4_UXaVyx8&list=PLJl4xQazDg...

It looks like there's a more recent series as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4-cftqTcdI

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drc500free

11 days ago

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I had him as a lecturer in undergrad, and I still remember the weightlessness of his intellect. It was one thing to realize that we were the same age, but his ability to flit around different concepts was remarkable.

There were a lot of people around who felt like high performance athletes of the mind, while he was just this sort of effortless butterfly going from flower to flower.

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FuriouslyAdrift

12 days ago

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Le Klint makes hand folded curved lamp shades that are prtty neat. They have workshops to teach people how to do it, too.

https://www.leklint.com/collections/pendants/products/le-kli...

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Centigonal

12 days ago

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What's great is that, if you accidentally sit on that lampshade or damaging it while moving houses, it has a second life as an IKEA KRUSNING!

https://www.ikea.com/ma/en/p/krusning-pendant-lamp-shade-whi...

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colechristensen

12 days ago

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Any info about the workshops? Or instructions on similar techniques?

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FuriouslyAdrift

12 days ago

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It's going on right now (in Copenhagen)

https://www.leklint.com/blogs/stories/3daysofdesign-2025

An old promo showing some of the techniques they use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3T_il3Qphc

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colechristensen

11 days ago

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Ah sadly on the wrong continent

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dendrite9

11 days ago

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You might be interested in Madonna Yoder's tessellation instructions: https://training.gatheringfolds.com/garden

I bought Folding Techniques for Designers: From Sheet to Form by Paul Jackson on a whim several years ago and found it fun to work through. I think he has a new edition and some other books but I don't have any experience with them.

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colechristensen

11 days ago

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I bought a few origami books on impulse today, Folding Techniques for Designers was among them so that's a good validation. I've vaguely wanted to make a fancy folded paper lamp for a while and seeing this on HN crystalized that desire into at least buying a handful of books. Thanks for the reference!

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FuriouslyAdrift

12 days ago

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There's also this: https://www.normann-copenhagen.com/en/Product/Product-Collec...

Which comes as a kit you put together (keep som clear packing tape handy... it can crack if folded to hard... lol)

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srean

11 days ago

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Curved creases aside, the fact that folding a piece of paper gives you a straight line is itself quite amazing and deep.

Even if I couldn't trust a cheap ruler, a straight edge is a piece of paper away.

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ndileas

11 days ago

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One of the underappreciated causes and effects of the industrial revolution is the precision that's around us all the time. To make that piece of paper required thousands of precision surfaces, rollers, etc.

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Cerium

11 days ago

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And oh how we take it for granted. I recently spent a few minutes trying to make sense of a situation where I was using a corner of a paper for a square. It turned out the piece of paper was not at all square, at least a quarter of an inch out of square!

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bigiain

11 days ago

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One important lesson I remember from high school woodworking class ~45 years ago - when using a set square, make your markings twice with the square flipped over in the opposite direction, so if the square isn't accurate you'll get two distinct markings - and for most wood working purposes just splitting the difference by eye will be accurate enough.

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titanomachy

11 days ago

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But folding any piece of paper will give you a straight line, no?

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ndileas

11 days ago

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Sure, this would probably work with nice handmade paper. But you won't necessarily get a clean fold with thicker or uneven paper, and depending on fiber length and distribution you might get waviness or other issues

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chabska

11 days ago

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traditional chinese paper making is way simpler than that, and produces quite reasonably flat papers.

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TheCoreh

11 days ago

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These remind me of the Elliptic Curve pieces from another post on the HN front page right now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44315321) I wonder if the poster was inspired by that one to also post these here?

Anyway, these are pretty cool/unique looking! I hadn't seen curved origami like this before.

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wonger_

11 days ago

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Actually I was just pruning old bookmarks, and thought people would find this origami interesting. I hadn't seen the elliptic curves post -- thanks!

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esafak

12 days ago

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This duo must have the most fun job in all academia.

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boulos

11 days ago

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For folks interested in folding and origami, the documentary Between the Folds was excellent. I don't know if anyone recorded a Q&A when it did the film festival circuit, but if you could find one, it'd be worth watching.

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saltyoutburst

11 days ago

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The doco (with section on Erik) is on YT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiIr7du6Y3w

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talkingtab

11 days ago

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The force from curved folds can be used in other ways. If you score a sheet of copper in a curved line, then fold it along the score you get a twisted form. If you have some poster board handy you can use the same technique as well. Vessels!

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maomaomiumiu

11 days ago

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Wow, I never realized you could create such intricate and beautiful structures with origami. This is seriously impressive work!

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bdbenton5255

11 days ago

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Wonderful, a nice meeting place between modern and classical art. Arguably one of the most alluring features of classical art is the complexity and intricacy of detail.

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kazinator

11 days ago

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> There is a surprisingly old history to curved-crease sculpture, going back to the 1920s at the Bauhaus.

That's surprisingly recent.

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davidpfarrell

11 days ago

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I don't know what I expected to see, but the site was full of ... Curved-Crease Sculptures ...

Beautiful just the same!

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wiz21c

11 days ago

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Now let's ask our not-yet-AGI robots to fold origami and we will see how far they go...