Uyen Nguyen

Designer
New York, New York, USA

Origami is my greatest passion. I created my first designs by experimenting with freehand folds on paper and seeing if I liked the results. My current work now involves precise calculations, and I generate the crease patterns for my designs on a computer. Mathematics, science, nature, and color theory serve as inspiration for all my works. I love all things bright and colorful, and paper is a great medium to express that love.

Chromatic Periodicity
Chromatic Periodicity
90 x 60 x 3 cm
stardream paper
2019

Each of the works in this composition was made using the algorithm described in the paper, “Folding Functions: Origami Corrugations from Equations”, by Uyen Nguyen, Ben Fritzson, and Marcus Michelen. They are flat-foldable, meaning that if the paper had zero thickness, each curve could compress down to a single point, and the entire sheet could exist within one plane. For this composition, I chose to model waves from three piecewise functions - a square wave, triangular wave, and semicircular wave - and one sine wave, respectively. The square and semicircular waves use quadrilaterals of alternating sizes to approximate the curve, the triangular wave uses a 60 degree rhombus, and the sine wave uses squares of uniform size.