Who is this beautiful woman making furniture that loves me back?
Neri Oxman, 33, MIT Media Lab Ph. D candidate. Photo is Esquire's. My first thought is for the future of my blue couch. Then much, much more.
Come back in twenty years and, if Oxman has her way, her world will look very different — buildings will be curvy and organic, echoing the structure of, say, pinecones or human skin. But more than that, the buildings will practically be alive. They'll move and adapt. Carbon nanotube walls will breathe through pores that change sizes. Chairs will reshape themselves to fit your body as you sit down. Clothes will have information from your DNA encoded in them and literally grow as you do.
Oxman — full profile here — is one of Esquire's 2009's "Top 23 Radicals and Rebels Who Are Changing the World." Other quality links: a Fast Company profile, a piece with a fantastic quote ("Forget about the way it looks — think about how it behaves"), and a video of Oxman at work against a discussion of cross-discipline needs. Her site is down, but her blog has more links. And, lastly, from Business Innovation Factory:
At her interdisciplinary research initiative, MATERIALECOLOGY, Oxman takes a contemplative approach to design. She asks atypical questions. Not, what type of building do we want to design? But, what behavior do we want to achieve with this space? What human and environmental values will be important here and how do we design a structure to accommodate those values?
"We're accustomed to thinking in terms of types and typologies," Oxman says. "We begin with specific a-priori high level rules and work toward some desired product. In search of new ways of designing I ask how we may decode the type, how to reject it by openly reconsidering its functionality? That's why values are crucial."
November 30th, 2009 at 11:09 AM
Have you seen Neri's video on our site too? It's 15 minutes of fabulous:
http://businessinnovationfactory.com/iss/video/bif5-neri-oxman
Cheers, Chris
November 30th, 2009 at 7:25 PM
Terrific video, Chris. Thanks so much for that and the story.
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:32 PM
I surrender completely. Intellectually, of course.