The Origami Forum

Hello, this is my first post here. Two months ago I was at the first origami exhibition in croatia. At joseph Wu's exhibit tag wrote that it was tension (not sure that I spelled it correctly) folded, what I didn't read before in origami books/web sites, so what is that?

The correct term is dry tension. It gives volume to the model and it is obtained just from creases, no foil, no tricks, just folds.

Joseph Wu is a master of it. Another great dry tension origamist was Philip Shen.

Here are a couple of references for Dry Tension folding:

http://origami.ousaan.com/gallery/

http://www.saadya.net/Curvigami/Curvigami3.html

- Hank Simon

Does anyone know some diagrams for dry tension models? I would love to try it.

Look up Cheng Chit. He experimented with "catastrophe folding" for a while. While more difficult and less stable than Joseph's works, you should be able to find some diagrams to give you an idea of what it's like.

Also, if you know anyone who's taken one of Joseph's classes at convention it's possible they may have diagrams. I know when I took his koi/carp class at PCOC 2003 he gave out diagrams. There was one tension step in there as I remember. His baby elephant and pelican also use dry tension.

Leong Cheng Chit Catastrophe Theory
http://www.paperfolding.com/chengchit/3d.php

I found some here:
http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/a ... hsfold.htm
but the links are wrong (need to delete the ".0catch" in the URL)

Here are a few edited:
http://lhs1701.com/seal.pdf
http://lhs1701.com/face.pdf


I think some of Robert Lang's CPs use dry tension.
http://www.langorigami.com/
http://www.langorigami.com/art/creasepa ... terns.php4

Let us know what new models you create, and pls post pix.

- Hank Simon

I couldn't share the diagrams but as I said before many of Philip Shen's models have dry tension like this start dish that was folded from paper that doesn't have any foil in it. Neither any CMC was added and you can see how it keeps its shape just by the inner creases.


If you are up for a challenge, you could try Joseph Wu's Goblet

The CP is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephwuor ... 494410704/