Flex, Crease + Wrinkle: A Companion to Curved Folding and Developable Form

Flex, Crease + Wrinkle exhibits the broad range of formal opportunities developed through manipulating sheets, and in particular through the act of folding. This handbook for architects and designers presents a comprehensive set of rules for curved folding, with an extensive visual catalog of examples at many scales.

Flex, Crease + Wrinkle is a unique compendium on the geometry of sheets. In elaborating the formal outcomes made possible through select manipulations of sheet materials, the book mixes precise geometric definitions, accessible descriptions of technique, digital resources including example scripts, and speculative musings on the value of such work. It augments this original research with examples from the author’s creative practice, illustrating formal and structural opportunities promised by the acts of folding, bending and inflating.

The included designs range from origami to object to proto-architectural installation, suggesting techniques for translating such forms across scales, in turn transcending disciplinary boundaries between industrial design, architecture, infrastructure engineering and others. The explicit intent of this book is to instrumentalize folding and related material transformations for form-making at many scales.