Mediated Matter

An ambitious monograph presenting one of the most inventive minds of our time, whose interdisciplinary design work blends, transcends and redefines the practices of computer science, digital fabrication, material science and synthetic biology.Neri Oxman has forged a singular career across design, science and technology for over twenty years. She defines her work at the MIT Media Lab, which approaches nature as processes and substances to be molded to design ends, as 'material ecology'. Using this method, products and buildings are designed as interactive entities that are environmentally informed, biologically augmented, computationally grown and digitally manufactured. Oxman's work is at the edge of many interrelated - and unexpected - practices. From using silkworms' thread to generate a cocoon-like construction to a synthetic apiary, and a water-based fabrication platform that prints structures made out of biopolymers, to automated microrobots that can build their own structure, Oxman and her teams are producing an entirely new vocabulary for designers with far-reaching implications. Mediated Matter is the first comprehensive overview of Oxman's work. Six central chapters - Biopolymers, Organic Comb, Natural Fibers, Vitreous Solids, Programmable Matter and Pigments - present the thinking behind the key projects and the process of their creation as well as their potential for use in the built environment, all shown in detail through diagrams, explanatory texts, process documents and breathtaking photographs. Through its scientific rigour, sheer imagination and design innovation, this book, like its author, is a future-facing manifesto for a true symbiosis of nature, humans and design.