On August 22, 2026, the joint project “Fold the Noise: Designing Origami Sound Barriers” between The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and Southeast University (SEU) was officially launched at SEU’s Jiulonghu Campus. This activity is supported by the Exchange Programme for Faculty and Students between the Mainland and Hong Kong and Macao Higher Education Institutions, aiming to build an interdisciplinary and cross‑regional collaborative learning platform for young students from both universities, and to promote the integration of civil engineering, structural design, and acoustic environment research.
Urban noise control is an important issue for improving the quality of the living environment. Introducing the geometric variability, lightweight nature, and rapid deployability of origami structures into acoustic barrier design offers new approaches to overcome the limitations of traditional acoustic barriers, such as fixed structures, inconvenient transportation and installation, and poor spatial adaptability.
The project is driven by real‑world urban environmental challenges and provides students with a complete practical training cycle, from problem identification and conceptual design to model fabrication and performance validation. During the project, students from both universities will form joint teams centred on the needs of urban noise control. Under the guidance of faculty members, they will engage in conceptual development, structural design, model making, and performance research, exploring the relationships among origami configurations, structural performance, and acoustic functions. The teams will integrate knowledge from structural mechanics, architectural design, materials science, and acoustic analysis to produce design outcomes that are both innovative and practically feasible, and will present their project results through final presentations.
PolyU and SEU each have their own strengths in engineering, architecture, design, and applied research. The implementation of this project will further enhance mutual understanding and friendship between faculty and students of the two universities, promote more outcomes in interdisciplinary joint training and collaborative innovation, and lay a solid foundation for continued deepening of talent cultivation and research cooperation between both sides.
