Origami Fountains by Ruth Asawa

The Origami Fountains consist of three distinct concrete basins, shaped like folded paper structures, set into the plaza of the Japantown Peace Plaza. Ruth Asawa designed them in nineteen seventy-six to capture the fragility of origami. Water spills over their ridged, geometric edges, masking the noise of city traffic with a constant flow. Asawa often involved local schoolchildren in her work, and for these fountains, she had them create the original paper models that she later cast into these permanent, heavy concrete forms.