A University of Arkansas researcher's quest to create stronger and lighter structures using kirigami-based design

2024-05-08T12:28:00-04:00

By making a series of cuts and folds in a sheet of paper, Baker found she could produce two planes connected by a complex set of thin strips. Without the need for any adhesive like glue or tape, this pattern created a surface that was thick but lightweight. Baker named her creation Spin-Valence. Structural tests later showed that an individual tile made this way, and rendered in steel, can bear more than a thousand times its own weight.

MIT Technology Review highlights the digital fabrication work of Emily Baker, an architect and assistant professor at the University of Arkansas' Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Baker began her research into lightweight and sturdy Spin-Valence structures as an architecture graduate student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

A concept for a shade structure in rural Arkansas following this design principle by Baker and collaborators Vincent Edwards, Edmund Harriss, Isabel Moreira de Oliveira, Eduardo Sosa, and Reilly Dickens-Hoffman also recently won the 2024 Forge Prize for innovation in steel architecture.

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A University of Arkansas researcher's quest to create stronger and lighter structures using kirigami-based design