Building the sponge has been a fun hobby but after not touching it for almost a year, losing interest, and not having much time to work on it, it's time to call it quits. It's been disassembled and "filed" away. I was surprised that I felt a little sad taking it down. It was a labor of love when I started.

Now what?

Mengermania will continue to live on for others who want to build their own sponges. The instructions are still useful and I'm happy to continue sharing the photos. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to rearrange a few things to put more of a focus on the instructions, photos, and general information about Menger sponges. The blog will still be here but not used much.

I've renewed the mengermania.com domain for another year but will not be renewing it next year. However, the site will still exist as a microsite hosted off of my main site, C82 at mengermania.c82.net. I can't just get rid of the site completely!

So for the few of you still following, thanks for reading and keep folding.

Photo courtesy of Lenore M. Edman, www.evilmadscientist.com.

Lenore Edman was adventurous enough to create her own unqiue fractal food—Sierpinksi cookies and they look great. They would be a yummy treat on a chilly April evening like tonight. I love that someone was geeky enough to take the time and make them. Plus, they're relatively simple to make. The author went so far as to create a cookie from a level three carpet…I wonder who will create a level four or even five? That would be one big snack!

Animated level nine sponge

I stumbled across Peter Miller's animated sponge a few days ago and was amazed at the simple beauty of a cube growing into a mind-blowing level nine sponge. His animation is 14-minutes long and is possibly the only animation out there of a sponge of that complexity. His page on sponges has a few other goodies including how to optimize sponges for 3D graphics.

Metal sponge

Bathsheba Grossman, an exceedingly talented sculptor, made a metal level four sponge. It's small enough to fit in two hands and would look great anywhere. I would get one immediately but unfortunately, they're no longer for sale due to production difficulties. Cutting all those holes must be pretty difficult so it's understandable. Bathsheba creates many other amazing works of art—many available for sale.

3D level four sponge

Jeff, a Mengermania reader, sent me his rendering of a level four sponge comprising 336,384 polygons. It took its toll on his computer during the rendering process but it came out great. He's working on building his own level three sponge and I wish him the best of luck.

Post-it sponge

Since May, when I wrote the post about making sponges out of Post-its, I've been slowly creating a level two sponge out of Post-its at work. I was only able to create a few cubes a day during my limited free time but it turned out great. It's just over six inches square and was made from 864 Post-its. Two photos of it are in the gallery.

I'm always on the lookout for more Menger sponge art, so if you've created something, let me know in the comments below or send me a note.

Level two sponge made from 864 Post-its.

Level two sponge made from 864 Post-its.

First, let's go over the basics. Preparation is the act of creating units—the individual pieces that compose cubes and the final sponge. Assembly is the act of interlocking units to create cubes and attaching them to the sponge.

Basically, units create cubes and cubes create sponges: units » cubes » sponges.

The easiest part of assembly is the first cube, requiring 6–10 units and a few easy steps. Attaching additional cubes can be done three ways:

Pre-assembly

The first method involves building a cube separately and leaving flaps exposed on sides that will interlock with other flaps. Pre-assembling cubes works best for cubes that will interlock with only one set of flaps, such as cubes on the 12 edges of a level 1 sponge.

Note: all cubes end up interlocking with at least two sets of flaps in all sponges, but flaps are exposed during assembly until more cubes are attached so some cubes will interlock with only one other until more are attached to them. For an example, see the first level four photo with some cubes attached on a single side.

Assembly on the fly

The second and most used method is used for cubes that interlock with two or more sets of flaps. Units should be added to the sponge one at a time.

Trying to attach a pre-assembled cube to multiple sets of flaps is enough to drive anyone mad because it is nearly impossible to make the flaps behave properly. (Don't believe me? Try it…now try it with three sets of flaps.) Assembling on the fly makes life much easier. Most of the time on larger sponges is spent assembling on the fly.

Some pre-assembly required

The last method was learned the hard way after many frustrating attempts and mangled units. There are areas in all sponges that are difficult to panel, such as the insides of the smallest holes. You could try to assemble the cubes in these areas on the fly and panel the necessary sides afterward, but depending on the direction of the flaps, you may find yourself wishing there was an easier way. The trick is to pre-assemble a cube up to step four in the cube assembly instructions and use that to start assembling on the fly. Explaining this without a demonstration is a little difficult and without access to a video camera.

While this can be a tricky method to master, it makes panelling those hard-to-reach sides easier since the bottom of the set of units after step four is the hard-to-reach side. Essentially, it's pre-panelled.

Mastering these assembly methods takes time and practice. By the time you finish folding a couple level one sponges, you should be able to do most of them quite well.

Ninth level two completed and the first of the four pillars of the first level three. Approximately 29,300 units.

Visible in this photo are three base rings, one for each level of sponge being built so far. The rings an their placement show a little more of the fractal nature of the sponge.

Up close and personal with the first ring.