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KODY KATO ON THE SENSUALITY OF FOLDS, THE REBELLION OF SLOWNESS, AND WHY THE FUTURE BENDS, NOT BREAKS.

In an age defined by automation and acceleration, a quiet force is reshaping how we build the world — one fold at a time. Origami, the centuries-old art of folding, is no longer confined to paper swans or ceremonial crafts. Today, it underpins a new generation of engineering and design — from NASA’s foldable solar panels to ETH Zurich’s robotic fabrication systems, and MIT’s silkworm-assisted architecture. Across disciplines, a radical idea is gaining ground: that ancient tactile intelligence may be the key to sustainable, adaptive, and emotionally resonant design in the AI era.

“Origami isn’t just poetic — it can create abstract natural forms,”

says architect and researcher Dr. Kody Kato, founder of the Office for Design Evolution.

“It’s not about folding paper. Origami and code share a surprising number of deep structural and conceptual similarities. A crease is like a line of code.”

At NASA, engineers are prototyping deployable structures using carbon fiber composites that mimic origami folds, designed to self-expand in microgravity using shape-memory polymers. At ETH Zurich, origami-based fiberglass mechanisms are being developed for precision robotics — their folded forms reducing both weight and waste. Meanwhile, MIT’s Mediated Matter Lab stunned the architecture world with the Silk Pavilion, a structure spun by 6,500 silkworms over a CNC scaffold — a literal hybrid of digital and biological fabrication.

These aren’t just technical breakthroughs. They mark a conceptual shift in design philosophy — from dominance to dialogue, from rigidity to responsiveness. As Kato puts it,

“In a world obsessed with speed and scale, the fold asks us to pause. It holds memory, invites care into craft — and reminds us that making is meaningful. That’s the real innovation.”

Kato’s work embodies this ethos. His award-winning installation Beyond Surface was constructed from over 5,500 interlocking paper modules suspended without adhesives — a structure that relies entirely on balance, tension, and gravitational negotiation.

“We didn’t force stability,” he explains. “We allowed it to emerge through interaction. That’s what I mean by materials being systems — it’s not just about engineering smarter structures. It’s about designing structures that know how to adapt and respond.”

The implications stretch far beyond sculpture. Kato’s firm, ODE, has applied these principles to functional architecture — from a zero-energy house in humid Malaysia that dehumidifies itself using hygroscopic materials, to a chocolate factory that utilizes color-changing pipes to signal thermal readiness via passive solar heat.

“Every material is a conversation with the environment,” he says. “It’s not magic. It’s material science, biology, and memory — folded together.”

Kato’s work exists where analog wisdom meets digital desire. Beyond Surface, built from over 5,000 folded paper modules and suspended in air without a single drop of glue, was engineered to shift and sway with gravity, not defy it.

“We didn’t fight gravity,” Kato explains. “We let it speak.”

The result was a floating cathedral of light, shadow, and paper that changed with every movement of air — part sculpture, part code, part emotional experience.

“People walked through it and paused,” he laughs. “It wasn’t about scale. It was in the stillness it created.”

But Kato is no nostalgic artisan. His design lab, the Office for Design Evolution (ODE), has hacked rice paper, repurposed heat, and even turned Malaysian humidity into a passive cooling system. In his Cocoa Craftsman Factory project, heat from the sun isn’t blocked — it’s absorbed through color-changing pipes that turn pink when they reach chocolate-melting temperatures.

“It’s not tech for tech’s sake,” he notes. “It’s sensorial and responsive.”

Visitors follow scent trails from herb gardens to live chocolate-making labs — part olfactory theatre, part climate activism.

Even more radical is Kato’s Hygroscopic House — a zero-carbon home that cools itself by breathing.

“We used materials that respond to moisture, so the house dehumidifies naturally,”

he says. It doesn’t need AC. It filters the weather. Every surface in the home was designed with biomimicry in mind: it doesn’t just shelter — it adapts, measures, and cools.

All of this falls under Kato’s manifesto: Creative Engineering©️ — a philosophy that blends structure, material science, evolutionary biology, and emotion. His work has earned global awards, a permanent spot in the British Encyclopedia, and comparisons to Buckminster Fuller with a poetic twist.

“Buildings aren’t monuments,” he says. “They’re material systems that evoke behavior.”

He’s less interested in skyline status and more in tactile intelligence — materials that adapt and respond to the world around it.

When discussing AI in design, Kato urges caution.

“AI can optimize,” he says. “But can it analyze friction? Can it know when to pause?”

His answer: not yet. But by integrating ancient logics — from the fold to the joint to the gravity pull — we might teach machines to do more than think. We might teach them to care.