Back and Forth and Back 1

Some beautiful work by Ian Koss:

Bloom Blanket by Bianca Cheng Costanzo

The Bloom blanket was created by Bianca Cheng Costanzo, an ex-Apple designer and veteran of the MIT

Blanket inspired by art and science:

As chilly weather drags on, there's still time to curl up on the couch under a nice cozy blanket. But most blankets are just so...flat. Not in terms of color or impact, but literally, they're flat, because they're a flat piece or knit of fabric. Not so with the Bloom, an art- and science-inspired blanket that's currently on Kickstarter.

Bloom was created by Bianca Cheng Costanzo, a Brazilian-born half-Chinese and half-Italian woman raised in California who dropped out of MIT (where she was a part of the famous MIT Media Lab) and worked as a designer at Apple (phew!). All of that, she says, comes into play with Bloom: a blanket inspired by both the origami she played with as a child and the tessellations she explored at MIT, created from soft Italian fabric.

Bloom is a blanket with a surprisingly three-dimensional design, constructed by sewing woolen tetrahedrons together. The final result is familiar, a pleasantly bumpy spread of pyramids that looks like a paper fortune teller. The material, Costanzo says, is Italian cashmere, and just stiff enough to maintain its shape. It's available in both white and grey and costs $249. At the moment, Costanzo is raising money on Kickstarter, where she's already demolished her funding goal. From a goal of $14,050, she's secured well over $160,000 already, with more than a week to go.

On her Kickstarter page:

Morphing Paper Fish

Description:

The main part of this toy is a piece of corrugated paper that can flex into different shapes. However the addition of a fin and a pair of eyes makes it into a kind of a fish! Squeeze the tail and the mouth opens, in quite a realistic way. But Tim always likes exploring new options, and the toy can be folded into a hat, rather like the traditional pith helmet that was worn in the tropics. But there's more... fold it another way, and you get a very strange hat, where the eyes give a very strange effect indeed!

This toy was bought back in 1995, and has not been available for a long time now.

And now I feel like opening up Tanteidan Convention Book 14 and fold Mabona's Puffer Fish:

Topic at the Origami Forum

Origami in Space: BYU-designed solar arrays inspired by origami

Hat tip:  Jeremy Shafer

video description:

Origami is a source of inspiration for BYU mechanical engineers who are working with the National Science Foundation, NASA/JPL and origami master Robert Lang to design complaint mechanisms for use in space and in other applications.
(Video produced by BYU News. Producer Julie Walker, Photographer Brian Wilcox, Editor Samuel Reimer. Additional images provided by NASA/JPL, langorigami.com, BYU Compliant Mechanisms Research Group, Matthew Gong, and Carrie Henzie (Redpath Museum).
See more about BYU space research and collaborations with origami master Robert Lang at http://bit.ly/17WMdRX

Garibi Ilan's Zipper Box

From a 7 x 38 grid:

Origami Creator Beth Johnson

Chris Palmer's Hat Tent

I learned this around 6 years ago. I've had the opportunity to meet Chris Palmer a few times during my annual trips to OUSA. His work is amazing!

Chris Palmer's website

Here's one with a slower paper memory:

Just be warned: It's a 3 minute video, and by half-way through, it becomes like watching paint dry and grass grow.