Neri Oxman Biography
Neri Oxman is an American-Israeli designer and MIT Media Lab professor who founded the Mediated Matter research group. Her art and architecture combine design, biology, computing, and materials engineering.
How old is Neri Oxman? – Age
She is 46 years old as of 6 February 2022. She was born in 1976 in Haifa, Israel.
Neri Oxman Family
Her parents are architecture professors Robert and Rivka Oxman. Keren, her sister, is an artist. Oxman grew up in Israel, where she spent her time at her parents’ architecture studio and at her grandmother’s house.
Neri Oxman Education
She served in the Israeli Air Force for two years, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. Following her military service, she spent two years at Hebrew University’s Hadassah Medical School before changing her major to architecture. She began her architectural studies at Technion Israel Institute of Technology and graduated in 2004 from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Oxman began his Ph.D. studies in architectural design and computation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, under the supervision of William J. Mitchell. Her thesis was about material-aware design. In 2010, she completed her doctoral studies.
Who is Neri Oxman’s Husband?
Previously, Oxman was married to Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. She married investor and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman in 2019, and they have a daughter. They are Pershing Square Foundation co-trustees.
Does Neri Oxman still work at MIT?
Oxman launched an interdisciplinary research project called material ecology at MIT in 2006 to experiment with generative design. She joined MIT in 2010, where she founded the interdisciplinary Mediated Matter group at the MIT Media Lab, and was given tenure in 2017. She helped launch the open Journal of Design Science in 2016, an “anti-disciplinary” journal that combines science, engineering, design, and art. She has published collaborative works in biology, medicine, wearables, and fabrication tool design. Her work has been cited as an inspiration for redesigning materials and structures. Her clothing line has been described as “otherworldly—defined by neither time nor place.”
Neri Oxman Net Worth
She has an estimated net worth of $25 million.
Neri Oxman Wearables
Oxman created Imaginary Beings, a collection of body-sized wearables inspired by legendary creatures, in 2012. She also worked on Anthozoa, a cape and skirt inspired by marine life, with van Herpen and materials engineer Craig Carter.
In 2015, she collaborated with Christoph Bader and Dominik Kolb to create the Wanderers collection, which was inspired by interplanetary exploration. The Living Mushtari chest piece was part of the collection, and it was a model digestive tract filled with a colony of microorganisms capable of sustaining life in harsh environments. Rottlace, a 3D-printed mask for Björk based on a 3D scan of the performer’s face, was created in 2016. It was worn by Björk during the world’s first 360° virtual reality Livestream. Oxman also created Lazarus, a project that captures the wearer’s final breath, and started work on Vespers, a collection of 15 death masks. The masks were divided into three categories: past, present, and future, and they were embedded with minerals and bacteria.
What did Neri Oxman Design?
The Mediated Matter group at MIT, which began in 2010, used computational design, digital fabrication, 3D printing, materials science, and synthetic biology to work with both small and large structures. The group created its own methods and printing platforms, as well as collaborated with a variety of 3D production systems. The scale of projects has ranged from enclosures and large furniture to artwork and clothing, as well as biocomposites, artificial valves, and DNA assembly. Taking images of a biological or natural sample, developing algorithms to produce similar structures, and developing new manufacturing processes to realize the results are all examples of production methods. Projects include wearable clothes and tools, solar-powered and biodegradable designs, new artistic techniques, and construction of surfaces, walls, coverings and load-bearing elements.
Neri Oxman Aguahoja
Aguahoja, a project involving a water-based fabrication platform that built structures out of chitosan, a curable water-soluble organic fiber similar to chitin, was also developed in 2014. By varying how the fibers were deposited, structural pillars or long leaves could be created. Using the same base material, the resulting combination of hard and soft structures could change from solid to willowy over the length of a branch or leaf. This was demonstrated in Aguahoja I and II, which featured a central 15-foot tall sculpture resembling “enormous, folded cicada wings.”