Rona Gurkewitz and Bennett Arnstein

Statement

Bennett and I experimented with Gyroscoping different regular polyhedra. We were motivated to find new forms and new origami models in a system or family of related polyhedra. The family was built on a common algorithm and functionality of modules with different regular polygon starting shapes. Gyroscoping a regular polyhedron involves putting a module with a point on each face and having the bases of the modules connect without glue. The gyroscoped model is an example of an unusual model in modular origami. It is made up of three different modules. Our third book has instructions for making these models and others. "Multimodular Origami Polyhedra: Archimedeans, Buckyballs and Duality", Dover Publications, 2003.

Artworks

The egg is a truncated hexadecahedron with a square face at both ends, eight pentagonal faces and sixteen hexagonal faces. The Gyroscoped Egg has each face of the Egg replaced by a vertex and thus the mountain fold edges of the Gyroscoped Egg form a dual polyhedron to the Egg. These models are interesting because they are elliptical rather than spherical. The dual model in the mountain folds of the Gyroscoped Egg's pentagonal and hexagonal facxes form interesting five pointed and six pointed stars The Egg is not a Johnson solid so it is a near miss to a regular polyhedron. We were inspired to create the Gyroscoped Egg by experimenting with Gyroscoping and just wanting to discover what it looked like.