Extreme Paper Folding: Origami Models Of Russian Landmarks

We’ve featured some very inspiring (and humongous) origami models on Bit Rebels over the years. I remember a while back I wrote about a dress created with 100,000 origami cranes folded from newspapers, and that’s just one example of many. As we always say though, as soon as you think you’ve seen the biggest most badass example of something, someone else comes along and trumps it with an even more extraordinary creation. That’s true if it’s a LEGO build, a cosplay costume, a life-size papercraft creation, or in this case, origami models of an entire city.

Sergei Tarasov will now forever be known as the man who built Moscow from paper. He used well over 100,000 sheets of A4 paper to build many of the main historic Russian landmarks in and around Moscow in the form of origami models. Just to give you an idea about the scope of this, he built the Saint Basil’s Cathedral, and that one structure alone is made up of about 60,000 separate paper folds. He puts them all together kind of like he’s assembling a puzzle. He is currently working on the Kremlin and a few others.

Aside from making these origami models, Sergei is also a teacher. He teaches his students all about origami, and I can only imagine what they all said when they saw his incredible builds. Although I call this extreme paper folding, it’s technically called modular origami. According to Wikipedia, “Modular Origami is a paper folding technique which uses two or more sheets of paper to create a larger and more complex structure than would be possible using single-piece origami techniques.” Wow, I would love to sit in on one of his classes someday. In addition to teaching his students about the art of making origami models, I’m sure he indirectly teaches them a lot about patience and dedication. You can read more about this on the source links listed below. How inspiring!