A new family of origami patterns has just been discovered. Bloom patterns hold promise for the origami community to explore as well as for scientists and engineers to apply to various fields. The research is published in the Royal Society at https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2025.0299, along with a BYU video:
Bloom patterns are rotationally symmetric, flat-foldable, and folded from flat sheets (developable), three valuable properties that no current origami was able to combine. This is possible because bloom patterns are made of a ring of wedges attached around a central polygon, much like a camera aperture. Each wedge can be folded flat around the central polygon. When folded together, the wedges overlap in a helical arrangement, like the stripes on a barber’s pole (imagine the pole is pressed flat from the top).
Origami tessellations can be combined and trimmed into repeating wedges. This includes the Yoshimura pattern, chicken wire tessellation, Miura-ori, crimp folds, and sink folds. Bloom patterns are named after their wedge tessellations, central polygon, and size. For example, the Y6.2 bloom folded by Evan Zodl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1D1XBx-kEw) is based on the Yoshimura pattern and a central hexagon, with two rings of diamonds extending from each side.
There are theoretically an endless number of unique bloom patterns that await to be explored. The ones found so far can be applied to launch numerous large surfaces into space. Imagine a stack of bloom-packed solar panels or mirror segments in a single rocket fairing that deploy into large circular arrays to collect sunlight for power or starlight for telescopes. They can also be slipped beneath satellites as deployable antennas or protective shades.
The shape of bloom patterns transforms from bowl to plate as they deploy. When made from waterproof materials like Tyvek, plastics, or metal foils, bloom patterns could become deployable and transformable containers for packaging food and home use (like large salad bowls). You can download videos and crease patterns to make your own bloom patterns at https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/data/85/.
Also try out our 3D printable bloom patterns: Thingiverse - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7098736, Printables - https://www.printables.com/model/1362780-folding-origami-bloom-pattern-hexagon, MakerWorld - https://makerworld.com/en/models/1715350-origami-bloom-pattern-foldable.
“Origami having deep roots as an ancient art, [you] would think that as a field of exploration, it would have been played out long ago. But the opposite is true. It’s as vibrant and growing as ever. As we look to the future, there are no limits on the horizon either artistically or now in this new technological area in the applications of origami-inspired design.” - Dr. Robert J. Lang, 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYf7nReaGPw)
