Mediated Matter: Design and Invention in the New Biological Age

A richly illustrated overview of the work of Neri Oxman, whose design approach embodies the union of technology and biology, as well as a future where we build with nature.

Mediated Matter is the first comprehensive overview of Neri Oxman’s groundbreaking design work. Oxman has forged a singular career across design, science, and engineering over the past twenty years that includes founding the field of material ecology. Trained as a medical doctor and an architect, she brings to design a spirit of inquiry and experimentation that includes a future-forward approach to materials—from silkworm thread to automated microrobots to a water-based robotic platform that 3D-prints structures made from biopolymers. In her work at the MIT Media Lab, she and her team designed products, structures, and environments as interactive entities that are environmentally informed, biologically augmented, computationally grown, and digitally manufactured.

Through richly detailed diagrams, explanatory texts, process documents, and breathtaking photographs, the book examines the six primary topics—biopolymers, cellular solids, fibers, functional pigments, organic comb, and symbiotic microbes—at the heart of Oxman’s key projects as well as their potential for use in the built environment. Scientifically rigorous and abundantly imagined, this novel publication, like its author, is a future-facing manifesto for a true symbiosis of nature, humans, and design.

Neri Oxman is the CEO of OXMAN, a design and innovation company based in New York City. She was formerly the Sony Corporation Career Development Professor and Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where she directed The Mediated Matter Group, receiving her tenure in 2017. Oxman’s work is included in numerous permanent collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Centre Georges Pompidou, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), the Smithsonian Institution, and others. In addition to over 150 publications, her work has been recognized at the World Economic Forum, where she was named a Cultural Leader in 2016 and is a member of the Expert Network. In 2018, Oxman was honored with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award and the London Design Innovation Medal. In 2019, Oxman received an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Contemporary Vision Award by SFMOMA.