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About the Project
Origami-Inspired illuminated Water Feature. The brief was to create a sculpture that appeared like a lantern that was floating on the water. Based on the concept of 16 squares and 32 triangles, our creative team identified a form that would look beautiful and delicate on the reflecting pool of Scotts Square Condominium. Joining the panels at many angles was not an easy feat, and required the skill of our craftsmen to get the angles of the glass right, piece by piece.
Concept
Can glass be folded? Can something so brittle be made to look like it was origami-ed into a life-sized paper sculpture? Florence was approached to create an artwork that could be lit in the night for the water feature of a luxury condo at Scotts Square in the Orchard Road shopping belt. She was however inspired to create origami sculptures made of white opalescent glass. At night, these would be lit from within and glow like floating lanterns in the dark. Undaunted by the idea of translating the Japanese art of paper-folding into a medium as hard as it was exacting to construct, Florence decided to form glass into the shapes you see here, which are, as she describes, “the essence of origami’s simplicity.”
The challenge, was that “as glass cannot be folded like paper, we crafted the glass panels such that each were very precisely measured, then cut and glued one piece at a time so that each joint would fit perfectly, which is to say, invisibly, and resemble a paper fold.” Intrigued by the permutations afforded in making origami, Florence experimented with different configurations of 16 squares and the 32 equilateral triangles which resulted in the folding of paper mockups.
Three years later in 2014, this concept of 16/32 was expanded into a collection of four similar glass origami sculptures for the International Furniture Fair in Singapore. An origami-style lamp and an end-table were created together with fellow glass artists Woo Meng Fye and established art educator and designer Ash Yeo. Unfortunately, the original sculptures were damaged and have since been removed from Scotts Square.
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