"Origami is something that can help engineering in a lot of ways." --Winnie yuasa, 6th grade
Origami is an art form where you fold pieces of paper into many things like dragons, cranes, butterflies, frogs, balloons and many more objects. The word even means “folding paper” in Japanese. Origami has been around for thousands of years, and is now being used for modern day architecture and engineering. Engineers create huge buildings, planes, and create blueprints for space ships, and all sorts of structures that we have today.
The thing is, these structures are huge and complicated. It might be hard to figure out all the things you would need and where to find room for it when you're traveling through space.
Origami is something that can help engineering in a lot of ways. One thing it helps with is being able to fold it into many complex shapes. This helps a lot with space travel, and is helpful to create designs that allow you to carry things when you are trying to keep everything as compact as possible.
“When I was getting my degree at the time, we did talk a little about origami throughout, which is a way of efficiently folding things,” said Mr. Amos, math teacher at OSA who got his degree in environmental engineering. “So one of the ways I heard about it using engineering even back when I was an engineer was when the space shuttle program was still going on, was how can we fold solar panels such that they can fit easily within a satellite capsule for a satellite, so they can more efficiently and be packed into the space shuttle so that they could then be brought out into space.”
The reason origami is a good tool to use when it comes to engineering is because it can do things some materials can’t. According to the Princeton University article called “Engineers design origami structures that change shape and stiffness on demand,” “An origami-based structure will fold and twist in certain ways based on the structure's material properties and its geometry. When engineers prevent that natural motion, they call it ‘frustrating’ the structure.”
"Sometimes frustration is desirable," said Glaucio Paulino, the Margareta Engman Augustine Professor of Engineering at Princeton. Frustration is basically adding elastic bands that can help make it easier to fold the paper or also unlocking some ways to fold paper that you couldn’t do before.
In the article by Princeton University, they go on to say “researchers described how they added elastic components to cylindrical origami structures called Kresling cells. The elastic sections act like springs.” You could also just use springs which introduce an internal energy mentioned in the article.
A new discovery in August of 2025 is a new pattern called a bloom. Bloom is a pattern that has some things that most other origami patterns could not. In an article called “Bloom Patterns – A New Family of Origami Designs,” it talks about how the bloom patterns can do things like be flat-foldable, rotationally symmetric, and be folded from flat sheets. This pattern combines three things that no other origami pattern has. This shows how this new origami pattern can be good for space crafts. There are also a few other patterns that are useful. Those patterns are the Yoshimura pattern, chicken wire tessellation, Miura-ori, crimp folds, and sink folds.
In the article it says that origami patterns are named after their central polygon, size, and wedge tessellations. This means that each pattern has a name that is unique to how the pattern looks and works. There are lots of different patterns in origami and so many more to be found. Another thing the Blooms can be used for is packaging things at home or in your kitchen. In the article it explains how the bloom could be a bowl and turn into a plate.
Another creation is the origami zippered tube. In a video (the second video) from an article called Origami engineering: the art of folding in space travel and robotics by Daniel Zapfl, he explains a thing called the Zippered Tube. It’s a design that allows things to be multifunctional. In the video there are a few examples on how the design could be used. One thing they said was that if you want to have a box for storage and don’t want it to take too much space you could use this design to create a box that is fairly large when you want to put things in it but when you need to put it into your storage it would become a small box. Another use they said you could probably create it out of this design is you could create a shading system.
The thing is, these structures are huge and complicated. It might be hard to figure out all the things you would need and where to find room for it when you're traveling through space.
Origami is something that can help engineering in a lot of ways. One thing it helps with is being able to fold it into many complex shapes. This helps a lot with space travel, and is helpful to create designs that allow you to carry things when you are trying to keep everything as compact as possible.
“When I was getting my degree at the time, we did talk a little about origami throughout, which is a way of efficiently folding things,” said Mr. Amos, math teacher at OSA who got his degree in environmental engineering. “So one of the ways I heard about it using engineering even back when I was an engineer was when the space shuttle program was still going on, was how can we fold solar panels such that they can fit easily within a satellite capsule for a satellite, so they can more efficiently and be packed into the space shuttle so that they could then be brought out into space.”
The reason origami is a good tool to use when it comes to engineering is because it can do things some materials can’t. According to the Princeton University article called “Engineers design origami structures that change shape and stiffness on demand,” “An origami-based structure will fold and twist in certain ways based on the structure's material properties and its geometry. When engineers prevent that natural motion, they call it ‘frustrating’ the structure.”
"Sometimes frustration is desirable," said Glaucio Paulino, the Margareta Engman Augustine Professor of Engineering at Princeton. Frustration is basically adding elastic bands that can help make it easier to fold the paper or also unlocking some ways to fold paper that you couldn’t do before.
In the article by Princeton University, they go on to say “researchers described how they added elastic components to cylindrical origami structures called Kresling cells. The elastic sections act like springs.” You could also just use springs which introduce an internal energy mentioned in the article.
A new discovery in August of 2025 is a new pattern called a bloom. Bloom is a pattern that has some things that most other origami patterns could not. In an article called “Bloom Patterns – A New Family of Origami Designs,” it talks about how the bloom patterns can do things like be flat-foldable, rotationally symmetric, and be folded from flat sheets. This pattern combines three things that no other origami pattern has. This shows how this new origami pattern can be good for space crafts. There are also a few other patterns that are useful. Those patterns are the Yoshimura pattern, chicken wire tessellation, Miura-ori, crimp folds, and sink folds.
In the article it says that origami patterns are named after their central polygon, size, and wedge tessellations. This means that each pattern has a name that is unique to how the pattern looks and works. There are lots of different patterns in origami and so many more to be found. Another thing the Blooms can be used for is packaging things at home or in your kitchen. In the article it explains how the bloom could be a bowl and turn into a plate.
Another creation is the origami zippered tube. In a video (the second video) from an article called Origami engineering: the art of folding in space travel and robotics by Daniel Zapfl, he explains a thing called the Zippered Tube. It’s a design that allows things to be multifunctional. In the video there are a few examples on how the design could be used. One thing they said was that if you want to have a box for storage and don’t want it to take too much space you could use this design to create a box that is fairly large when you want to put things in it but when you need to put it into your storage it would become a small box. Another use they said you could probably create it out of this design is you could create a shading system.
Origami is so multifunctional it can be used for many reasons. It started as just an art form only certain people could practice and now it’s an art that people use in engineering. It has so many aspects you can use it for and many more patterns. Every fold is important and each pattern can create a 3D masterpiece from a simple butterfly to a bloom which is used in engineering. It went from a simple, little butterfly folded from paper into how to fix spacing issues in space ships.
Origami can help a lot in modern day, but it was used for different things in the past. Did you know origami actually had a different name when it was first created?
One thing some people might not know is that the art was originally called orikata (o-ree-KAH-tah) which means “folding shapes.” Orikata was a visual skill that some people like high ranking soldiers or aristocrats did in Japan after the twelfth century. Only people who were in the privileged social class were able to do it because back then paper was more expensive. Later more people could do origami because the price of paper went down. In 1880, that was when Orikata had started to be called origami. In an article called Kinetic Joy Basic Principles of paper Engineering (Where most of the information before this was found) it mentions a bit about the two earliest books about instructions for origami. The two books are Tsutsumi-no Ki by Sadatake Ise which was made in 1764 and Sembazuru Orikata by Akisato Rito which was made in 1797. Now as we approach a more advanced society we might start to think about how modern origami became a thing.
Akira Yoshizawa is the father of modern origami. He was born on March 14th of 1911 and died at the age of 94 in 2005. He had been a great help when it came to the creation and foundation of modern origami, he had made thousands of new designs. In an article called Akira Yoshizawa: Japan’s Greatest Origami Master it mentions how he has created thousands of new designs and techniques. It alsoThis gives a bit of context to what Yoshizawa has done and why he is so important when it comes to origami. The article says “It includes a preface by his widow Kiyo Yoshizawa, an introduction by Robert Lang, Yoshizawa’s biography with timelines, hundreds of artworks that are beautifully photographed in full colors, and hand-drawn diagrammed instructions of over 60 models.” Origami has definitely become quite an art from when it first started.
Origami can help a lot in modern day, but it was used for different things in the past. Did you know origami actually had a different name when it was first created?
One thing some people might not know is that the art was originally called orikata (o-ree-KAH-tah) which means “folding shapes.” Orikata was a visual skill that some people like high ranking soldiers or aristocrats did in Japan after the twelfth century. Only people who were in the privileged social class were able to do it because back then paper was more expensive. Later more people could do origami because the price of paper went down. In 1880, that was when Orikata had started to be called origami. In an article called Kinetic Joy Basic Principles of paper Engineering (Where most of the information before this was found) it mentions a bit about the two earliest books about instructions for origami. The two books are Tsutsumi-no Ki by Sadatake Ise which was made in 1764 and Sembazuru Orikata by Akisato Rito which was made in 1797. Now as we approach a more advanced society we might start to think about how modern origami became a thing.
Akira Yoshizawa is the father of modern origami. He was born on March 14th of 1911 and died at the age of 94 in 2005. He had been a great help when it came to the creation and foundation of modern origami, he had made thousands of new designs. In an article called Akira Yoshizawa: Japan’s Greatest Origami Master it mentions how he has created thousands of new designs and techniques. It alsoThis gives a bit of context to what Yoshizawa has done and why he is so important when it comes to origami. The article says “It includes a preface by his widow Kiyo Yoshizawa, an introduction by Robert Lang, Yoshizawa’s biography with timelines, hundreds of artworks that are beautifully photographed in full colors, and hand-drawn diagrammed instructions of over 60 models.” Origami has definitely become quite an art from when it first started.