DIY Papercraft Architecture with Lighting
This is probably the least "Mathy" thing I will ever post. In my opinion, it's impossible to have architecture that isn't mathematical in some sense, so I am posting it anyway. Two years ago, I made a papercraft version of a cathedral in Christchurch New Zealand (It was severely damaged in an earthquake earlier this year) and cut holes for all of the windows and lit it with LED lights. I gave it to my Mom as a Christmas gift. I thought it made for a pretty amazing "Christmas Village" piece.
The template was from Canon's amazing papercraft site.
Here you can see the switch on the lower right:
And here is a shot showing the inner workings:
I'd love to see someone make some lighted projects for Christmas. If you do, feel free to post 'em up! Also be sure to check out all of the cool papercraft at the canon site. There is a lot of amazing architectural pieces. I especially love Antoni Gaudi's cathedral Sagrada Familia (template here), and some pretty cool holiday things including some pop up card templates if you search around.
4 Comments
At some point I'll put up a post about Sagrada Familia since it is a very mathematical piece of architecture. I built the papercraft version which has about 30 pages worth of templates and 24 pages of instructions. It's not a project for the faint of heart but it is a beautiful model. Here's a link to a small post and some pictures on my old blog.
canon papercraft site is so killer... i've been tempted by that sagrada familia for a couple years now. i love gaudi. i think i attempted one of the smaller models a couple years back and found it pretty difficult, but maybe I'll check it out again.
They are time consuming but pretty fun and I think you learn a lot about the place by making the model. I don't use the same methods that most people use. I make them out of thick cardstock for strength and lightly etch the folds with an X-Acto knife so everything folds crisply and quickly. I also use superglue gel (I prefer the locktite superglue gel control since it holds so well and is much cleaner) so I can go a lot faster than most people. Still, I figure it takes about an hour per page of templates for most of their projects.
This is really detailed!
Share Your Thoughts