Neri Oxman: 1976 – Present
Middle East • Architecture • Graphic Designer • Scientist • Educator • Feminism
In a not in a too distant land, there is a girl who loves nature, biology, art, and design. Neri Oxman grew up in Isreal, spending time in her parents’ architecture studio. Neri was a first lieutenant in the two years she served in the Israeli Air Force. After her military service, she went to school for architecture. In addition to being a renowned architect and a professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), she developed and pioneered the field of Material Ecology — creating human-made structures and their environments so that it uses and matches nature. Neri creates objects and structures through growth instead of assembly by combining 3D printing with biology, engineering, materials science, and computer science. Her most famous work to date of this nature is a pavilion structure spun by 17,532 silkworms.
Neri’s story shows that women can significantly change how our society interacts with the world by shifting how nature is incorporated into our human-built environment.
What is Material Ecology?
Material Ecology focuses on the relationship between products, buildings, systems, and their environment. The purpose is often related to sustainability and/or understanding the natural environment. It can be considered an intersection between multiple subjects: Biology, Materials Science & Engineering, and Computer Science.