Needing to clean my brain, I looked for some box-pleating (as that is absorbing, fiddly and it is difficult to to do or think anything else while doing it):

I came across a design for a folding chair, folded in 24ths and decided to give it a go.

After much wrestling, I discovered there was a mistake in the instructions, meaning the proportions of the legs, cross-bar and seat/back were all out by odd amounts.

Unfolding it completely, making a cup of tea and then re-folding with some extra pleats to compensate and voila, we end up with a chair-like object that has huge potential for further development.

This reminds me of furniture designed by jack Skillman, but the principles here could be generalised. Without glue, cuts or even MC, the shape holds itself, I can see options to hide or re-use the top and bottom pleats, with a twist at the sides the seat gets cushions – neat really.