Neri Oxman is naturing our future

2018  Sue Disler, bizcommunity,

From the website: Neri Oxman, architect, inventor, engineer, designer, scientist and founding director of the Mediated Matter Group at MIT Media Lab, who spoke on Day 3, thanked Design Indaba's founder, Ravi Nadoo for letting her be "suntanned by the Mother City's spirit." And after hearing her speak, we can only but thank him too for unleashing this ingenious and spirituous creature into our midst... albeit for only 30 minutes.

Oxman and her team think on a daily basis about what it means for today's designers to computationally grow forms – instead of bottling them up as preconceived shaven forms – and to connect the form generation process, both with the material properties that one is working with whether it's concrete or polymer etc. They also take into account the fabrication process; be it knitting, laser cutting, etc. And it’s this connection, between the material and technique that they care very much about, as its relevant “when you think about growing as opposed to assembling”.

“Nature doesn't assemble, nature grows and we're now at a point in time, and this is partly why the water crisis is here, there was a clash between the world of nature and the world of culture, the world of biology and technology, and the world of design and the role of nature. And how they connect is a very, very slow process because it’s a passionate one. So, with 300,000,000 tons of plastic being wasted annually, this is a good time to ask, can we create manmade objects that are natural, but also can we create natural objects are manmade?“
To put it simply, they continuously ask themselves how we shape the things around us, or the physical reality, to match nature. They then find ways to invent natural materials that will help us live on this planet well into the future – she calls this type of design Naturing - the verb, not the noun.