Unfolding the Church started with the interest of origami and paper folding. With the start of a simple origami crane brought on interest in geometrical origami and tessellation’s. Turning a 2D piece of paper into a 3D form was motivational which led to further investigation into paper folding, ultimately determining the design concept for this project. Understanding how could that form become inhabited and used in architecture, led to a path of discovery. How could a simple fold create space? How could folds take you on a journey? A church seems a logical program to take you on a journey of inspirational space and thus “Unfolding the Church” was born.

Studying the history and meaning behind church design, it is clear that church domes are used to symbolize looking to the heavens. The dome shape also has symbolism in that the space is open and seems unsupported but in reality is supported by a hierarchy that eventually reaches the religious peak or the heavens. Pondering how folding could create a dome and how folds and creases could great the feeling of openness and support only through the hierarchy was challenging but came together once the idea of creating bands of folds that were placed on each floor which ultimately created the dome shape.

Creating the dome bands, started with a piece of paper which was folded into an appealing pattern and then imported into an origami generated computer program. The folded computer model was then brought into a 3D Modeling program and the points of each fold were pulled into an inhabited space. The discovery process on how to create a space that someone could move through became clearer when two bands of folds placed on top of each other but with the second band being larger than the first created space between the two bands that one could inhabit.