Apropos of nothing in particular, my most recent origami construction is my first proper attempt at Tom Hull’s Five Intersecting Tetrahedra.
As origami legend Robert Lang notes the geometric object depicted (which goes by the quite fantastic name chiricosahedron) has been known for centuries, but only appeared in origami sometime in the 1990s. Lang says that “Naturally, of course, I wished I’d thought of it”, which in the world or origami is a bit like having Paul McCartney say he wished he wrote your song.
Anyway, it was an instant classic and according to Tom Hull’s CV voted one of the top 10 origami models of all time by the British Origami Society in 2000.
All I can say is that while not difficult to fold, it’s mind-bending to assemble. I only got there with the help of this video, which provides valuable guidance on where exactly to thread the edges of each tetrahedron through to make it all hang together. Even with that help, when I thought I’d finished I had one strut the wrong side of another, which I only realised when I went to photograph it.
Now I’ve made it once, I have a better appreciation of the logic of its geometry. The key is to realise that each set of five tetrahedra corners form the corners of the faces of a dodecahedron. Or at any rate, I think that will help, next time. There is also a symmetry to how pairs of tetrahedra poke through the middle of one face of two of the others.
But writing about origami is, as has been said of writing about music, like dancing about architecture, so I’ll stop there.Suffice to say, I think I could probably make it a second time unassisted by YouTube.
Probably.
Full disclosure, I retreated to the relative safety of this model having dismally failed to make this absurd construction, Sixteen Interlocking Triangles by Byriah Loper from a copy of Mind-Blowing Modular Origami that I found in a second hand bookshop a week or two ago. Loper’s models are extraordinary, but really… I think I’m more taken with the balance between complexity and elegance of Five Intersecting Triangles. I certainly won’t be tackling this monstrosity any time soon, although there’s something pleasingly globe-like about Ten Intersecting Nonagons.
