Paper Perfect: Robert Lang and the Science of Origami

On February 4, 2014, Robert Lang joined Joshua Foer onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions. Lang is recognized as one of the pioneers of the marriage of origami with mathematics and technology. He is the author of numerous books, including Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami, coauthored with Meher McArthur. The conversation that follows was recorded live and has been edited for brevity and meaning.

Joshua Foer: I want to start by asking you about how you made a name for yourself in the field of origami. As I understand, it all started with a single work you completed in 1987.

Yes, the cuckoo clock. It has leaves around the outside and a deer’s head on top, and a cuckoo, of course, coming out the door, and pinecone weights, and the pendulum, and all of this is folded from a single uncut sheet of paper. Oh, and it told the correct time twice a day. That got a lot of attention in the origami world, which is a very small world but it’s still got a lot of competition. After that, one thing led to another.

Just so we’re all clear about the terms here: That was folded with one uncut sheet of paper—no glue?

No glue.

How big was the paper?

A one-by-ten-foot rectangle.

How long did it take you to fold?

I worked on the design over a period of two to three months and worked on folding parts of it little by little. When I sat down to fold the display piece all at once, it took about six hours of solid folding.

Could you show us how you execute a piece of origami?

Sure. To speed this along I brought paper that already has some folds in it. This is foil-backed paper, which is really nice for shaping. It’s basically wrapping paper, but origamists use it because it works really well when you need to fold something quickly and want to get a little bit of shaping in.

So what are we looking at? This looks to me like a package that’s already been unwrapped.

I’ve put some of the most important creases already in this piece of paper, and I can tell you based on what the creases are what the different parts are also. The head is going to come from this little star-shaped region here. And then we’re going to have one arm coming from the corner here, and another arm coming from the corner there, and there’s going to be a foot here and a foot there.

Robert Lang. Alamo, CA, May 2014. (photographs by jason motlagh)

Where did origami start?

Well, the word origami is Japanese, and the art form as we recognize it today has its deepest roots in the Japanese craft. Paper itself was invented by the Chinese, and they took it to Japan by way of Korea around the seventh century a.d. The art began with ceremonial origami, where the folds themselves were maybe not complicated but the positions of the folds had a particular meaning. And much later there was this decorative craft as a way to make toys or decorations out of something relatively inexpensive.

And since then there’s been some evolution in the technology of paper-folding.

Yes. In the twentieth century, a poor metal-worker named Akira Yoshizawa took up this paper-folding art, and he began creating new figures. There were already a couple hundred simple figures, but Yoshizawa created thousands of new figures. He brought a new level of life and beauty to the art form. He established new folding techniques that allowed people to make soft organic forms and even to do some of the shaping. He was possibly the first to explore the use of foil-based paper, the kind I’m using now. He also...