The Traditional Chinese Scholar's Rock, Recreated Using Cardboard

I'm Emily, a 9th-grade student at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. I'm 15 years old.

I am very fond of traditional Chinese garden landscapes, especially the fascinating rock formations, known as scholar's rocks. These rocks make the scenery more dynamic and enriched. In ancient China, they were extremely expensive and required significant resources and manpower to be transported from all over the country to the imperial capital as offerings to the emperor. I plan to recreate these rocks using cardboard, giving them a bit of a modern twist.

The materials I need are very simple: cardboard, an art knife, and double-sided tape. The equipment and software I need are: CAD Fusion360 and a printer.

First, I will select a high-quality image of a traditional Chinese scholar's rock that I am satisfied with. The image will serve as the base model for my design.

Using CAD software, I will carefully deconstruct the image into slices, breaking the rock's complex structure into a series of manageable, two-dimensional surfaces. I will then trace and outline each slice in CAD to create detailed cutting plans.

With all the cardboard slices cut, I will begin assembling the structure by gluing the pieces together in sequence. The goal is to recreate the original rock's 3D form layer by layer.

If time permits, I plan to recreate the scholar’s rock using acrylic instead of cardboard. The process will be the same, but the final product will have a more polished, durable, and refined appearance.