Blooming Origami Discovered at BYU

September 2025

BYU Engineering is well known for origami-inspired research and innovations, including foldable antenna systems used in space. Recently, an undergraduate student made a significant discovery—a new family of origami patterns with promising applications across a range of fields.

BYU student Kelvin (Zhongyuan) Wang is the lead author of this discovery, which was recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society. Co-authors include BYU professor Larry Howell, a global expert on compliant mechanisms, and Robert J. Lang, an origami artist and a leading theorist on origami mathematics.

“Origami is a centuries-old art form, so it’s really unusual for us to discover new origami patterns, a new family of patterns,” Howell says.

The researchers coined the term “bloom patterns” to describe this new group of unfolding mechanisms that resemble flowers blooming.

“Bloom patterns have three main characteristics that make them unique,” says Wang, a BYU mechanical engineering major. “First, they can be folded flat. Second, they are deployable. Third, they expand like a flower blooming, rotating from a symmetric center.”
While one or two of these features are common in origami, it has been rare to find all three characteristics in a single design. This combination offers both technical and economic advantages.

• Flat foldability is ideal for stowing large arrays in compact spaces.
• Deployable systems require crease patterns that allow transformation without damaging the material.
• Repeating panels and rotational symmetry offer stability and lower manufacturing cost, since it’s more efficient to replicate identical panels than to produce varied parts.

“One can imagine using that intermediate state, that spherical shape, as the desired finished state,” says Lang who has worked with BYU on various origami projects for the past 10 years. Lang emphasized that this discovery opens a research field for testing real-world applications.

“We've opened a door into a new family of patterns, and we can now go explore through that door,” Lang says. 

For Wang the process of discovery has been both creative and fulfilling.

“The process of discovery requires a lot of repetition. I feel incredibly peaceful as I fold and get into that state of flow. I can fold sometimes for hours. It feels wonderful to do that even when it’s mostly repetitions. I’m creating something out of paper with my hands and ideas come to my mind—to reality—about how to make it into a physical model. I love to do origami but if I can use origami to make practical applications that can benefit the world, that will be a dream come true.”