Geography Cat Crafts

Modular origami dodecahedron

Geography Cat March 25, 2020
It’s not as difficult as it looks

Geography Cat’s neighbour gave him an old atlas and we used the paper to make this super cool modular origami dodecahedron. The paper from the atlas turned out to be purrfect for the project, thick enough to hold the fold and thin enough to bend when needed. You could use colourful pages from an old magazine, old books or printer paper for example. Here’s how to make one:

Cut your paper into rectangles that are 3:4 (We used 3″x 4″, but you could scale it up to 6″x 8″ or any other variation as long as the proportions are 3:4)
You need 30 rectangles, all the same
Fold into thirds like a Z shape, crease the folds really well
Place the Z so that the top third ends with a raw (not creased) edge towards you. Then carefully fold the right hand corner up and the left hand corner down so the short edge meets the long edge.
Fold diagonally across between the inner creases you just made, a ruler helps a lot with this.
This is the finished unit. Do exactly the same for all 30 pieces.
Take two units and tuck a short end into the Z so that the short crease rests inside the long crease. Do NOT use glue.
Take a third unit and tuck the short fold into the long fold, then tuck the remaining short fold into the remaining long fold. Make sure all short folds are lying inside the long folds. If you’ve got this far, the rest is easy!
Keep adding units so that the short fold is always tucked inside the long fold. Notice that each face of the dodecahedron is a pentagon so needs 5 units.
As it becomes larger you should use bulldog clips to help you. Do NOT use glue.
When the last unit is in place gently squeeze together and check each join.

One Reply to “Modular origami dodecahedron”

  1. This reminds me of my junior maths teacher 50 years ago 😊 We had to make all sorts of shapes… think mine was a truncated tetrahedron 👵

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