About Origami House
What began as a whimsical idea remarked by Darren Scott was eventually taken up as a project and brought into reality by director Matt Gardiner, a team of designers, folders and paper engineers.
Origami House is the largest house to be made using folded paper, it required the folding of over 1 square kilometre of paper, some 15,000 folds and at least 8 weekends of solid labour by a devoted group, and 5 long days to install.
Design
Origami House is built on the foundation of a stroke of brilliant but simple origami design by Steven Casey. The Brick is a modular model folded from a 2 x 1 sheet of paper that interlocks like a normal brick and has a high strength to weight ratio. We measured one brick holding 6kg of water without showing signs of buckling.
The brick is folded from 2:1 rectangle, and creates a 2:1 rectangular face on the brick. The brick is ingenious in that it has a slit in the middle of the top slot, allowing the brick to be slotted and laid in a normal house brick fashion.
Architecture
The architecture of Origami House was purposely designed to reflect a childlike image of a house, the traditional rectangle and triangle, for a single main reason: Origami House should be easy to build. The 45¼ pitch of the roof was the simplest solution, as the bricks could easily be folded to match the pitch at the peaks of the walls. The positioning of the windows allows access for natural and gallery lighting, and the doors open to allow visitors to walk through to see the variety of housefold objects inside.
It is intended that the viewer walk through and around Origami House, to experience the detail and scale of the house, to allow them to reflect upon how it was made, to tempt them to test the walls strength, and admire the details indoors.
Thanks
Origami House was made with care and devotion from the following people. Our sincere thanks go to:
Australian Paper and staff for creating and donating such high quality paper.
Local Folders:
Matt Gardiner, My Trinh Ha, Steven Casey, Martin Liu, Darren Scott, Brenda Saunders, Gareth Louis, Mike Hopkins, Judy Hopkins, Charmaine Cruise, Anna Pang, Chung, Madeleine Beatty, Sarah Toohey, Rosemary Iacono, Edward Burger, Brett & Greg Sacks, Jade Enge, Wanda Gillespie, Mandy Vicsai, Cathy Parry, Shaun Gardner, Paul Gardiner, and Deb Taylor.
International Contributors:
Maekawa Jun (Tokyo, Japan), Jonathan Baxer (New Zealand), June Sakamoto (New Jersey, USA), Kay Eng (New York, USA), Ching-Yu Hung (Texas, USA), and Dorothy Engleman (USA).
Latrobe Gallery Staff:
Louise Tegart, Sherryn Vardy, Cliff Wandin (huge thanks to Cliff for assistance, patience, hard work, and advice during installation), Anthea, Johanna, Linda, and Sarah.
School children:
Boolarra Primary School - grades 5 & 6
Sacred Heart Primary School - grades 3 & 4
Rosedale Primary School - grades 5 & 6
Kurnai College Churchill - year 7
Exerpt from Folding Australia Convention Book
ISBN 0-9757463-0-8
Available from papercrane.org April 2005