Neri Oxman
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Neri Oxman
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Neri Oxman is a force of nature in most
possible ways. Designer, architect, conceptual
artist, synthetic biologist and star player
at MIT Media Lab, Oxman is heralding
a new age of bio-informed design and hacked
natural processes. She calls it ‘Material
Ecology’; we call it, potentially, an Earth-
salving paradigm shift, an organic alternative
to the waste, dirt and sharp edges of
traditional making and building. Over the
next 30 pages, Oxman talks us through the
ideas driving her Mediated Matter research
lab – a team of designers, architects, data
whizzes, programmers, molecular biologists
and more – and their projects. Much of
her work to date has been deliberately
dazzling but Oxman is about to move from
speculation to application. And the ideas
in these pages will start to get real.