The action that's been reserved for thin, flexible materials is about to get a boost. Researchers studying the ancient art of origami have figured out some new ways to make rigid, thick structures ...

Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. One uncut square of paper can, in the hands of an origami artist, be folded into a bird, a frog, a sailboat, or a Japanese samurai helmet beetle.

Sounds like a gimmick, but yeah. Tina Hovsepian, a recent grad of USC’s architecture school, has invented a cardboard shelter that pops up like an origami balloon. A repeating diamond shape in the ...