Student Origami Exhibit 2008-2009

The deadline for submissions is TBA.

The exhibit opening is TBA.

View the list of past winners or a photo gallery of their creations.

Tech Talk Story

Student Origami Exhibit 2007-2008

The Wiesner Student Art Gallery has been taken over by various insects, monsters, even a dancer—and each is a marvel of engineered folding.

About the contest
Sponsored by the Office of the Arts/Student & Artist-in-Residence Programs, and the Office of Erik Demaine, this contest was designed to promote interest in origami in the MIT community and showcase student work. Models must be made entirely by folding - no glue or tape can be used - although they may be modular. Original designs are encouraged but not required. Submitted works are judged by a jury and winning entries are exhibited in the Wiesner Gallery.

2007-2008 Winning Submissions

Best Original Design: Butterfly by Jason Ku '09

Best Technical Folding: Faerie, an original design by Jason Ku '09

Best MIT Themed: Beaver #3 (in the lighter brown paper), an original design by Andrea
Hawksley G

Best Use of Paper: Female Cardinal, an original design by Andrea Hawksley G

Best Color Change: Sailboat, an original design by Andrea Hawksley G

Best New Take on a Traditional Technique: Connected Cranes (brown) by Pei Lin Ren '11

Best Miniature: Crane on Snowflake by Pei Lin Ren '11

Best Modular: #3 (twirly, multicolored paper) [title unknown, designer of model unknown] folded by Xiao Xiao '09

Honorable Mention, Modular: "Colliding Suns" double icosahedron by Joel Lewis G

Best Simple Model: Green Heart by Yuan Gong G

Some examples of student's work:

"Modified Valentine" by Andrea Hawksley '07

"Mantis" by Brian Chan 'G

"MIT Pleat Fold" by Howard Kellogg '08

For more information, email artscoordinator@mit.edu or call 3-8089.

About the judges :

• Brian Chan is a current PhD student at MIT. He began folding around  the age of 7, when his parents gave him John Montroll's "Animal  Origami for the Enthusiast" and "Origami for the Enthusiast". It was  not until 2004 when Robert Lang came to MIT to talk about origami  design that he started designing his own creations. Since then he has  designed many technical pieces such as insects and anime characters,  and has won several origami awards, the latest being "Best Original  Model" and "Best MIT Themed Model" for his origami version of the  Mens et Manus seal. In 2006 he was one of two Yoshino Issei Fund  invited guests to the Japan Origami Academic Society and has designs  published in the Origami Tanteidan and Origami USA Annual Collections.
• Elsa Chen graduated with a SBEE from MIT in 1989. She will always be  grateful to Mr. Bob Giovannucci at Lincoln Laboratory for telling her  about the origami mailing list in 1990. She learned about the Friends  of the Origami Center of America (since renamed OrigamiUSA) from this  e-mail list and hasn't missed an OrigamiUSA Convention since. She has  taken classes from origami artists specializing in various styles of  work, ranging from complex representational (e.g., Akira Yoshizawa,  Michael LaFosse, Robert Lang) through geometric (e.g., Chris Palmer,  Jeannine Mosely, Tomoko Fuse). She has been a contributing member of  the origami fanzine, imagiro, since 1995. More recently, she has  traveled to Japan to attend conventions of the Japanese Origami  Academic Soceity and the Nippon Origami Association.
• Erik Demaine is an assistant professor in EECS who, in addition to  enjoying folding paper, studies origami mathematically and  algorithmically. He is currently co-authoring a book on folding and  unfolding together with Joseph O'Rourke. Erik is also collaborating  with Robert Lang to understand the algorithmic design process of  origami and implementing these ideas into a program called TreeMaker.  Erik writes a bimonthly column for Imagiro, an origami zine. He has  been folding origami for 6 years.
• Martin Demaine is a visiting scientist in the MIT Lab for Computer  Science studying folding problems and algorithmic art. He has been  enjoying origami for 20 years. As a glassblower, his work is in  several museum collections in Canada and Australia. He also has been  commisioned to make a set of goblets for Queen Elizabeth. Martin and  Erik Demaine developed the paper folding methods for "Hyparhedra"-- polyhedral sculptures based on hyperbolic paraboloids--featured in  "Fragments of Infinity" by Ivars Peterson.
• Anne LaVin (MIT SB 1985, Aeronautics and Astronautics) has been  practicing origami for over 30 years, ever since being introduced to  it (and loving it immediately) in elementary school. A member of  OrigamiUSA since 1992, and the Japan Origami Academic Society since  1998, she regularly attends workshops and conventions in New York  and, when possible, in Japan. Her origami interests span the range of  the craft, in style, content and technique, from representational and  sculptural to geometric and mathematical, and extend to a variety of  related paper crafts, including papermaking and bookbinding. Her most  recent origami activities have included the translation, from  Japanese to English, of the book "Polyhedron Origami" with origami  creator and author Miyuki Kawamura, and the production of origami  artwork for a television advertisment for Cingular Wireless.
• Jeannine Moseley (MIT Ph.D. 1984, Electrical Engineering and Computer  Science) first started doing origami as a child, over 40 years ago.  She joined Origami USA in 1995 and regularly attends any origami  conventions she can get to. She has designed numerous geometric  original models, and is best known for her models made from business  cards. In 1996 she started the Business Card Menger's Sponge Project  to build a model of the fractal known as Menger's Sponge out of  66,048 recycled business cards. This is a community educational  project involving hundreds of volunteers, and she expects the model  to be completed in 2003. In 2002, she was chosen as one of two  recipients of the Yoshino Issei Prize by the Japan Origami Academic  Society, which paid for her trip to Tokyo to attend and teach at  their annual convention.