Pioneer, artist, mother, doctor.
Neri Oxman came to our attention from a Netflix episode of Abstract. We were immediately drawn to the way she reinterpreted materials, objects, and construction. It didn’t take us long to learn she’s more than a great thinker: she’s a pioneer.
She is the founder of a discipline she calls material ecology. A method by which she marries the technological advances of computational design, synthetic biology, and digital fabrication (3D printing) to produce compostable structures, glass objects that vary their optical and structural properties, and one of a kind garments.
From Vespers II mask 04 surface colors transformed into internal vasculature. photo: Yoram Reshef
Cartesian Wax: 20 tiles were assembled as a continuum comprised of multiple resin types.
A bit of context.
We begin her educational journey at the Architectural Association in London where she earned her diploma. She also studied at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and completed training at the Department of Medical Sciences at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In 2010, she received her PhD in Design Computation at MIT.
Her 20-year-long career spans from being an architect, designer, inventor, doctor, and as of a couple years ago, mother. As an architect and research consultant at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates in London, she was part of the team that changed the face of multiple industries. As an artist, her works live permanently at the MoMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the list goes on.
But what really stood out to us is her relentless pursuit of change in humankind. She believes in future solving: tackling humanitarian issues years before they become problematic. Ethereal? Yes. But it takes abstract thought to tackle problems that aren’t here yet. And it’s that kind of thinking that ultimately changes the course of history.
Neri Oxman is definitely a name to know and someone we’ll be watching closely for years to come. Her influence is about to make waves, and we, for one, can’t wait to get caught in the splash.She
