It all began when a six-year-old boy from Atlanta, Robert Lang, received a book on origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding, as a gift. While his classmates spent their afternoons playing baseball, Robert stayed at home, studying and making his first original creations.
The one-time kid went on to become a physicist and laser diode specialist for NASA, but he never gave up origami. Far from considering it just a hobby, he devoted himself to it with such seriousness as to study its possible industrial applications in depth, involving companies and engineering faculties in his work.
Starting from the assumption that origami, like certain branches of mathematics, studies relative models, Lang realized that he could set up origami mathematically. Thus was born the first software for designing origami models, from artistic to industrial, and what started as a hobby became a full-time job.
Since then, under the guidance of Lang, various devices inspired by the ancient Japanese technique have been devised: solar panels that fold back on themselves, emergency shelters that take up the space of a document holder, and still special airbags for cars and wafer-thin first aid equipment.
However, his vocation as a designer has never made Lang forget his artistic vocation: in his long career he has in fact created more than 650 original models, built only for the joy of the eyes and the heart, many of which are exhibited in various museums in the United States .
Attachments: Asahi
