The Berlin Wall

30 years since the wall came down – here’s a tribute I made at the time. In case you can’t read the words…

Visiting the Berlin Wall in 1997 was a deeply moving experience. I thought for some time about whether an origami representation of the Wall would simply be a shallow gesture, but decided that the process of folding it might allow time for reflection on the significance of the Wall itself. This might then be the criteria for assessing the success of the design, rather than any technical or aesthetic viewpoint.

However, two aspects of the design pleased me from an origami point of view; the final profile is a square exactly 3/4 of the original sheet, so only a small amount of paper is “lost”, plus every crease has a reference except the last two, which form themselves in the final step.