Mediated Matter: Design & Invention in the New Biological Age

An ambitious monograph on Neri Oxman, 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. Trained as both a medical doctor and an architect, she has brought an entirely new spirit of thinking and experimentation to all facets of design. Oxman 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. The products of her ground-breaking methods are arresting and have major implications for all aspects and scales of design, where 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, from 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, Cellular Solids, Fibers, Functional Pigments, Organic Comb and Symbiotic Microbes – present the thinking behind the key projects and the process of their creation as well as, crucially, 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 novel publication, like its author, is a future-facing manifesto for a true symbiosis of nature and design.

About the Author

Architect, scientist, engineer and inventor, Neri Oxman leads the creation of scientific research on technology with a focus on integrative design across scales and disciplines. In 2009, she made the list of the 20 Most Influential Architects Who Are Shaping Our Future (Icon Magazine). With Material Ecology, Oxman has pioneered a field that advances previously impossible design possibilities; informing how buildings and products are made and how their shape and composition of materials can harmonize with the ecosystems they inhabit.