(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-06-03)
James, Andre
Folding empowers the user to change the form and function of a sheet of paper through a sequence of manipulations. Unfolding the once folded artefact produces a diagram that describes its own making that can be replicated at different scales using a new material. Architecturally, folding can be employed a morphogenetic solution to design a system that can be fabricated from a sheet material, that like paper, can be folded into a inhabitable structure.
The ease and cost efficiency of fabrication based on folding can be used to design a system that executed using low cost materials can be used as a shelter that accommodates programmatic and aesthetic evolution. Thus, the system lends itself to being a transitional shelter for communities that have been displaced due to a natural disaster or other form of crisis.
Technological advances in design and structural analysis can give the designer the power to define the complex process folding parametrically allowing the input a real-time feedback based design based on an a folding inspired algorithm.