WS5
Structural Origami Collaboration: Design and Manufacturing of Cellular Origami for Architecture
Learning Objectives
The primary objective of the workshop is to develop proficiency in the design and production of structural forms, e.g., load-bearing, deployable, and programmable, derived from flat sheet materials. The participants will learn to integrate geometric, structural, and manufacturing constraints into the early design stages using sheets of paper and computational tools.
The specific learning goals are:
-geometric concepts and computational tools for generating fabricable, foldable, and functional components.
-design strategies of a modular system for assembly into complex geometries.
-structural understanding of cellular form contributing to stiffness and lightweightness.
-collaborative practice with experts in different fields.
Workshop description
This two-day hands-on workshop explores folding as a manufacturing and structural design tool, linking architecture, engineering, and fabrication through geometry. Participants will work in small teams to design and construct cellular structures composed of folded elements. The goal is to optimize a structure for stiffness and strength under constraints of size, material stock, and rapid manufacturing.
To begin the workshop, students will be presented with a specific design challenge. Working collaboratively, each team must develop a solution that uses folded molecules to assemble a larger structure optimized for stiffness. The designs must also respond to the available material stock and the constraints of the manufacturing processes at hand. The workshop will take place at the CBA fabrication space, where a variety of digital and manual tools are available. Building on the 2023 AAG origami workshop, this edition emphasizes the integration of folded designs, their manufacturing process, assembly, and structural performance. Participants will be encouraged to think through a cellular design strategy where local geometry, joinery, and global structure must work together to achieve structural performance.
We make this workshop a venue for students, researchers, and practitioners to engage meaningfully with each other. Instructors—researchers in Structural Origami—will introduce computational tools and geometric techniques for designing foldable components that assemble into load-bearing systems. Participants will also give lightning talks to share their background, interests, and current work. The workshop culminates in a complete design-to-fabrication workflow: modeling, simulation, file preparation, digital manufacturing, and physical assembly.
Participant Prerequisites
-Experience in Rhinoceros and Grasshopper
-Digital Fabrication. Some experience with laser cutting and, not mandatory, some CNC machining.
-Rhinoceros, Grasshopper.
-Bring your own laptop
-We encourage participants to bring prototypes and samples to present their work related to architectural geometry.
Workshop Information
Workshop Leaders
Alfonso Parra Rubio, MIT
Alfonso Parra Rubio is a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working at the Center for Bits and Atoms led by Neil Gershenfeld. His research explores how folding and discrete assembly can be combined to design and manufacture architected materials across multiple scales: from bulk cellular materials (millimeters to centimeters), to structural corrugations and actuated systems (centimeters to meters), and up to architectural-scale shell structures (meters to decameters). His work fundamentally explores how materials and structures are designed, engineered, manufactured, and assembled. In addition to his academic research, he founded RnKolektive, a collaborative platform for sculptural exploration. This parallel practice focuses on mixed-media works that merge folding techniques with blown glass, creating pieces that use the same research contributions but with an expressive intention.
Tomohiro Tachi, University of Tokyo
Tomohiro Tachi is a Professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo. He studied architecture and received his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2010. He has been designing origami since 2002 and continues to explore three-dimensional and kinematic forms through computation. He has developed computational origami tools, including "rigid origami simulator," "origamizer," and "freeform origami," which are available on his website. He explores form, function, and fabrication in nature and art. His research interests include origami engineering, structural morphology, and computational fabrication. He is engaged in STEAM education at the University of Tokyo, College of Arts and Sciences.
Erik Demaine, MIT
Erik Demaine is a Professor in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Demaine's research interests range throughout algorithms, from data structures for improving web searches to the geometry of understanding how proteins fold, to the computational difficulty of playing games. He received a MacArthur Fellowship as a “computational geometer tackling and solving difficult problems related to folding and bending—moving readily between the theoretical and the playful, with a keen eye to revealing the former in the latter”. He appears in the origami documentaries Between the Folds and NOVA's The Origami Revolution, cowrote a book about the theory of folding (Geometric Folding Algorithms), and a book about the computational complexity of games (Games, Puzzles, and Computation). Together with his father Martin, his interests span the connections between mathematics and art, including curved-crease sculptures in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Renwick Gallery in the Smithsonian.
Rupert Maleczek, i.sd
Rupert Maleczek is an Architect, Researcher, and digital Consultant, currently working as a post-doc Senior Scientist at the i.sd (Institute of Structure and design), on the architectural faculty at the University of Innsbruck. In his multidisciplinary work, he explores the relation between geometry, form, structure, performance, materiality, and digital as well as physical production. This investigation is often based on the scalability of physical, geometrical, and biological phenomena. The aim of his research is the understanding of complex relations to enhance control over them through controlled simplification. This process, also known as simplexity enables an unpretentious access to complex processes for non-specialists.
Daiki Kanaoka, FabCafe Tokyo
Leveraging his extensive knowledge of digital fabrication, he joined the launch of FabCafe Tokyo as a Fab Engineer, later leading its Fab department and hosting technical workshops. Drawing on both his expertise and global network, he has helped establish FabCafes worldwide, collaborated with international creators, designed educational programs with municipalities and universities, directed art exhibitions, managed communities, and planned computational design projects. Since 2019, he has served as the business lead of FabCafe Tokyo, and since 2021, he has also planned and executed projects at the University of Tokyo’s Tomohiro Tachi Laboratory, including the “CONNECTING ARTIFACTS” Exhibition
Riccardo Foschi, University of Bologna
Riccardo Foschi is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna. Ph.D. in architectural representation with a thesis on the algorithmic modelling of origami applied to architecture and manufacturing. His research interests are in the fields of representation and survey of architecture and product design, computational modelling, applied origami, digitization of artistic heritage, and virtual hypothetical reconstruction of unbuilt or lost heritage. He participated to Europeab initiatives aimed at standardising the process of reconstruction of lost architectural heritage, and participates to the international research group "Structural Origami Gatherings". He is author of numerous articles and contributed to the organization of workshops, museum exhibitions and events in his fields of expertise.