Neri Oxman (Hebrew:נרי אוקסמן; born February 6, 1976) is an American-Israeli designer and former professor known for art that combines design, biology, computing, and materials engineering.[2] She coined the phrase "material ecology" to define her work.[3][4]
Many of Oxman's projects use new platforms and techniques for 3D printing and fabrication, often incorporating nature and biology. They include co-fabrication systems for building hybrid structures with silkworms,[8][9] bees, and ants; a water-based fabrication platform that built structures such asAguahoja out ofchitosan;[10] and the first 3D printer for optically transparent glass.[11] Other projects include printed clothing, wearables, and furniture.[12]
Neri Oxman was born inHaifa,Israel, the daughter of architecture professors Robert andRivka Oxman.[13] Her sister Keren Oxman is an artist.[14] Oxman grew up in Israel, spending time in her parents' architecture studio and at her grandmother's house.[15]
In 2006, Oxman began an interdisciplinary research project at MIT calledmaterial ecology, to experiment with generative design.[17] She became a professor at MIT in 2010, and was given her own lab, the Mediated Matter group atMIT Media Lab.[18][19] She was granted tenure at MIT in 2017.[20]
Her research interests involve parametric and contextual design, including engineering techniques to realize those designs in various materials and contexts. Examples include creating a "skin" for buildings that can tan in the sun to create shade, and structural biodegradable polymers.[21][15] She has published collaborations in biology, medicine, wearables, and the design of fabrication tools.[22]
Her work has been mentioned as an inspiration for changing how materials and structures are designed.[23] In 2016, she helped launch the openJournal of Design Science,[24] an "antidisciplinary" journal which journal co-founderJoi Ito described as "working in spaces that simply do not fit into any existing academic discipline." She wrote that science, engineering, design and art are connected, with the output of each serving as input for the others.[25]
Oxman's early projects took the form of surfaces, furniture, or objects that could be worn or put on display. Since 2013, most projects have included temporary or interactive installations, including the production process and study of its material properties. These include both mechanical processes, such as forOcean Pavilion andGlass I,[26] and biological ones, such as forSilk Pavilion andSynthetic Apiary.[27][28]
Oxman serves on the Executive Advisory Board of theWORLD.MINDS Foundation, where she contributes to interdisciplinary conversations at the nexus of design, science, and society.[33]
Oxman's Mediated Matter research group uses computational design, digital fabrication,3D printing, materials science and synthetic biology for large and small structures.[29][34] The group developed its own methods and printing platforms, and worked with a range of 3D production systems. Projects have ranged in scale from enclosures and large furniture, to artwork and clothes, tobiocomposites, artificial valves, andDNA assembly. Production methods include taking images of a biological or natural sample, developing algorithms to produce similar structures, and developing new manufacturing processes to realize the results.Projects include wearable clothes and tools,[35]solar-powered and biodegradable designs,[36] new artistic techniques, and construction of surfaces, walls, coverings and load-bearing elements.
TheSilk Pavilion, an installation designed in 2013, was noted for its fabrication method as much as its final form. It was woven by 6,500 free-rangingsilkworms on a nylon-frame dome.[37] Experiments with the silkworms identified how they would respond to different surfaces, and what would encourage them to spin onto an existing structure rather than spinning a cocoon. The frame of a largepolyhedral dome was loosely woven by arobotic arm out of thinnylon threads, and suspended in an open room.[38] The dome was designed with gaps where it would be warmest. Silkworms were released onto the frame in waves, where they added layers of silk before being removed. This involved engineering,sericulture, and modeling sun in the room. The resulting pavilion was hung so that people could stand inside it. This was reprised in 2020 forSilk Pavilion II, installed as part of the Oxman exhibition at MoMA.[39]
TheSynthetic Apiary, a room-sized installation built in 2015, studied the behavior ofbees in an indoor environment, including how they built hives in and around different structures. This was developed in collaboration with a beekeeping company, as a way of testing possible responses to colony loss, and exploring how biological niches could be integrated into buildings.[40]
In 2012, Oxman printed a set of body-sized wearables,Imaginary Beings, inspired by legendary creatures.[41] She also collaborated withvan Herpen and materials scientistW. Craig Carter onAnthozoa, a cape and skirt evocative of marine life.[42]
In 2015, she designed theWanderers collection, inspired by interplanetary exploration, in collaboration withChristoph Bader andDominik Kolb. The collection included theLiving Mushtari chestpiece, a model digestive tract filled containing a colony of microorganisms that could sustain life in harsh environments.[43] The collection was described byAndrew Bolton as "defined by neither time nor place".[44]
In 2016, she producedRottlace, a 3D-printed mask forBjörk,[45] based on a 3D scan of the performer's face. Björk wore it in the world's first 360° virtual reality livestream.[12][46] Oxman also developedLazarus, a project designed to capture the wearer's last breath, and began work onVespers, a collection of 15 death masks. The masks were divided into past, present, and future, and embedded with minerals and bacteria.[47][48]
In 2014, she collaborated with Carter onGemini, achaise longue with a milled wood frame and 3D-printed upholstery designed for both structural and acoustical properties, designed to recreate a calming womb-like environment.[49] It was produced with a combination of additive and subtractive printing.SFMOMA acquired the piece the next year.[50] This work gave rise to a model for a larger scaleGemini Cinema.[51]
Mediated Matter also prototyped new platforms and tools for printing. These included a printer that can print entire sections of rooms, a glass printer, and a quick-curing printer that can make free-standing objects without support structures.[52]
In 2014, they developedG3DP,[53][54] the first 3D printer to produce optically transparent glass.[55][56] At the time, sintering 3D printers could print with glass powder, but the results were brittle and opaque.[57]G3DP was a collaboration with MIT's Glass Lab and theWyss Institute, emulating traditional glass working processes, with a kiln and annealing chamber. The process allowed close control of color, transparency, thickness and texture.[58][59] Certain settings turned the printer into a "molten glass sewing machine".[60] Two generations of the printer,G3DP andG3DP2, produced collection of vessels that have gone on exhibit asGlass I andGlass II.[61][62]
A 10-foot glass and light sculpture printed by this platform,YET, was installed at the 2017Milan Design Week.[63]
Also in 2014, the group developedAguahoja, a project involving a water-based fabrication platform that built structures out ofchitosan, a curable water-soluble organic fiber similar tochitin. Structural pillars or long leaves could be made by varying how the fibers were deposited. The resulting combination of hard and soft structures could change from solid to willowy over the length of a branch or leaf, using the same base material.[15] This was demonstrated in a pair of installations,Aguahoja I andII, featuring a central 15-foot tall sculpture resembling "enormous, folded cicada wings".[64]
In 2016, the group developed a large-scale robotic printing system, theDigital Construction Platform (DCP), which printed polyurethane foam molds with a robot arm based on the Altecaerial work platform. DCP v2 was able to print a section of a dome 15 meters across and 4 meters high.[65][66][67]
Starting in 2018, the Mediated Matter lab developed theTotems project, exploring ways to extractmelanin from different species and embed it in 3D-printed structures. This led to a concept for buildings with facades that respond to sunlight, such as a proposed architectural pavilion initiated byRavi Naidoo and introduced at hisDesign Indaba conference.[68][69]
From 2017 to 2020, a new Silk Pavilion was developed,Silk Pavilion II, exploring new potential models for gathering silk from silkworms without needing to boil cocoons and end the silkworm's lifecycle.[32]
In 2020, the lab produced a new Aguahoja installation,Aguahoja III, identical to the first but stored in a climate-controlled gallery. This is intended to serve as a long-term control against which to compare the original, in measuring how chitosan degrades or is influenced by environmental changes.[70] The lab stopped active work in 2021.[71]
In 2019, an MIT report revealed that Oxman's lab had received $125,000 fromJeffrey Epstein, part of a series of donations (including one for a "Knotty Discretionary Fund")[72] he made to the Media Lab and its directorJoi Ito.[73][74] Oxman asked people in her lab to prepare and send a gift to Epstein, according to documents shared by an MIT employee. A graduate student emailed to Oxman: “Have you read the articles about this Jeff Epstein? He seems pretty shady. . . . Just wanted to point it out in case you weren’t aware."[74] Oxman stated she was aware, adding in the e-mail, that “Jeff E.” should always be “confidential" and told the student that they were not sponsored by Epstein.[74]
Starting in 2020, Oxman's studio, Oxman Architects, has explored similar themes in their projects. They produced a documentary about their work,Nature × Humanity,[75] which became the name of a 2022 exhibition of their work at SFMOMA.[76]
In 2020, she created the final version ofSilk Pavilion II, weaving a new pavilion inPadua, Italy in collaboration with a silkworm-rearing facility in nearbyTeolo. The structure was constructed on a dissolvable hyperboloid.[32]
In 2021, her team revisited the Synthetic Apiary, constructing a new environment for bees to build hives, printed with embedded pheromones. The resulting hive structures were analyzed byCT scans to allow digital reconstruction and provide insight into the bees' construction process.[77] They also designed an experiment testing how bees respond to low-gravity environments, and fabricated a new type of payload module to house the experiment on aBlue Origin suborbital flight.[78]
In late 2023, Oxman's husband,Bill Ackman, joined calls to removeClaudine Gay as president ofHarvard overplagiarism accusations.[79] Shortly after, journalists atBusiness Insider published articles alleging Oxman plagiarized from a range of sources, includingfrom Wikipedia, in her 2010 PhD dissertation and three journal articles.[80][81][82][83][84] Oxman subsequently apologized for what she called "citation errors".[85]Business Insider's ownerAxel Springer said that it investigated the outlet's "processes" after Ackman questioned their motives,[86] and stood by its reporting.[87][88]
Oxman's philosophy of material ecology was developed in 2006 while a graduate student at MIT.[17] It combines3D printing techniques withbiology,engineering,materials science, andcomputer science to create objects and structures through growth and without assembly.[89] She proposed developing a material ecology with "holistic products, characterized by property gradients and multi-functionality" – placing humanity in harmony with nature,[90] in contrast to assembly lines and “a world made of parts".[91]
She described her work as shifting "fromconsuming nature as a geological resource toediting it as a biological one."[34][92] This includes using biological shapes as inspiration, textures, and even fabrication, such as the glowing bacteria inMushtari and the silkworms in theSilk Pavilion.[8][93]Museum of Modern Art curatorPaola Antonelli described Oxman's work as a way to "decipher nature's myriad [design] lessons and render them digitally for future application at all scales."[90]
Oxman's approach to form generation and environmental design[94] is cited by rapid prototypers in other fields,[95] and gave a popular 2015 TED talk on material ecology.[91][96] In 2019, theNetflix docu-seriesAbstract: The Art of Design featured her work in its second season.[97]
Oxman's early work focused on 3D printing, including projects likeCarpal Skin, which used the profile of pain for a person with carpal tunnel syndrome to ease their discomfort, andMonocoque (2007), a demonstration of how a printed structure could support its weight via its exterior skin rather than interior supports.[103] This required a printer that could simultaneously print multiple materials with different structural properties,[104] a process she named "variable property rapid prototyping".[105][106] In 2008, futuristBruce Sterling called her work "shatteringly different from anything before".[107] Later works involved fabrication by animals or by natural processes.
In 2016, Oxman worked withBjörk to create a mask based on the singer's face, and worked with Dutch fashion designerIris van Herpen to 3D-print a collection of wearable couture.[21][108]
In 2016, she served as a culture leader at theWorld Economic Forum and received MIT's Collier Medal.[135] In 2018, she received a Design Innovation Medal from theLondon Design Festival.[134][136][137] The following year,Aguahoja was named "Sustainable Design of the Year" and "Design Project of the Year" inDezeen's annual awards.[138][139]
^Bibb, Richard (2015).Medical Modelling: The Application of Advanced Design and Rapid Prototyping Techniques in Medicine. Woodhead Publishing. pp. 313, 332.ISBN9781782423003.
^US application 2011079936, Oxman, Neri, "Methods and apparatus for variable property rapid prototyping", published April 7, 2011, since abandoned.
^Sterling, Bruce (May 1, 2008). "Neri Oxman weaves nature's logic into design and makes buildings, architects, and Bruce Sterling sweat".Abitare Magazine.
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