Dürer’s Solid (Melancholia)

This strange looking solid appears in Albrecht Dürer’s 1514 woodcut ‘Melancholia’. Dürer was trying to find the ’missing’ Archimedean solid using only regular pentagons and regular triangles. Of course, we know now that it doesn’t exist but Dürer spent a long time trying to solve this and when he realised it was impossible he made this woodcut with contains other unsolvable problems along side the solid, with a banner above it with the word ’melancholia’. Peter Mielke challenged me to make an origami version of the form in the woodcut and I obliged with a live online tutorial. The model is made from 6 square with no rulers, scissors, glue etc. and has two of my own original joint types.