The Origami Forum

I teach kindergarten (students are 5 years old) in Taipei. Next month, the theme for lessons is their home country of Taiwan. I'd love to be able to do a modular origami version of the famous skyscraper Taipei 101, but lack the designing skills.

I envisage each child making one block and then we could slot them all together to construct the tower. The design would need to be super simple as they lack fine-motor skills and struggle with reference points more complicated than angle bisectors or folding a sheet in half. They'd need to be able to complete the fold in about 30 minutes.

I'd be able to make a more complex base and top to complete the model. Anyone have any ideas for the bulk of the model?

It's a good Idea, except the building has only 8 segments so you may end up folding multiple towers or having students work in teams to fold each piece.
If you want a flat 2 dimensional model, you can try using simple cups like this one as blocks:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/73 ... db370c.jpg
I'm not a teacher and I don't know little kids that well, but good luck!

Making a flat version is an excellent idea. That'll make it way easier for the kids .

By chance I found today a picture of a modular model of the building: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kosmulski ... 545069046/

Looks awesome if you ask me, but I don't it it's easy enough for your students.

Thanks for pointing out my model, Gerardo. Unfortunately, I think it's too hard for children - the slanting parts require quite a bit of precision. You could simplify the model to just a set of simple cubes - then you would get the base and a square tower and that version would be OK for children, but the model would lose a lot of detail and I'm not sure if it would be recognizable any more.