Sean Yan

Constructed Bouquet

Class of: 2027

Major: Product Design BFA

Medium: Paper Model

Prompt: The prompt of this project was to create either a toy, bag, or chair with polyhedron shapes. We were only allowed to use bristol paper, cardboard and foam core. The biggest highlight/challenge with this project was the fact that we weren't allowed to use any adhesives (glue, tape, etc.) to hold together the pieces/shapes.

I personally felt like the prompt was a little limited as we could only choose between a bag, chair or toy. I decided to make a flower vase with flowers in it as it could fall under the category of a “bag” since it’s an object that is holding something. We were only supposed to choose two polyhedron shapes for the objects but I decided to go with multiple different shapes as the main objective of this project for me was to use as many polyhedron shapes as I could. I made the flower vase and flowers from bristol paper as I liked the flexibility of the paper and how thin it was, despite the challenges of it folding and bending too easily. The flower vase consists of a dodecahedron for the base, pentagonal pyramid for the middle and a partial icosahedron for the top/opening. The roses consists of a partial icosahedron stuffed with scrap pieces of bristol paper to act as the petals and the asters are constructed with a partial dodecahedron for the petals and pentagonal prism for the pistil. For the stems, I used wooden dowels. The vase is connected and held together by brass fasteners and the flowers are held together by paper tabs and slits. Additionally, I was able to hold the flowers onto the stems by drilling two holes into each wooden dowel and sticking in small wooden sticks, one underneath the flowers and one within the flowers to hold it in place. For the last step, I painted everything with spray paint.