They have come to compare it with Terminator, but not with the titanium robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but with Terminator 2 and that unclassifiable liquid metal character. She herself looks like an envoy from the future. His projects move between art, science, design and engineering as sprouts of a new era. Israeli-American architect Neri Oxman (47) designs structures stronger than steel woven from thousands of silkworms or spacesuits that stick to the body like another skin.
Brad Pitt asks him for advice for urban projects; singer Björk orders masks with fluorescent microorganisms for her concerts; Jeff Bezos reserves a spot on the Blue Origin ships for his bee experiments; the MoMA in New York opens its doors to you as if it were your home. Oxman, a professor at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States (MIT) and director of the Mediated Matter research group, is weaving a silent revolution on the relationship between humanity and nature, on the materials we use to build the world.
"Every year more than 300 million tons of plastic are produced, less than 10% is recycled while the rest ends up in landfills or in the oceans. Why do we continue to design with plastics? Cellulose, chitin or pectin present in trees, crustaceans or apples are more efficient and adaptable organic materials than human-made structures," she explains. In his lectures Oxman traces a line from the industrial revolution where mass production and assembly prevail, a conception of the world where everything is formed by parts that are assembled. Nature, he emphasizes, works differently, grows, evolves.
Oxman grew up watching the trees in his grandmother's garden in Haifa and hearing stories about Genesis. She does not consider herself religious, but she remembers that first tree created by God that had not evolved and that seemed to be formed of a single element. Thus came chitin, the second most abundant biopolymer on the planet – after cellulose – found in prawns, crabs or scorpions. With his shells he produced a paste to design, with 3D printers, giant sheets where bacteria live that transform carbon dioxide into sugar. The project is called Aguahoja and can biodegrade with rain.
"I met Neri Oxman 16 years ago and since then he has been at the forefront of building a new way forward, pushing architects and designers to engage with nature. Neri is developing new techniques and materials, recognizing that design is an agent of change," Paola Antonelli, senior curator and director of research and development at MoMA, said in an email. In 2020 Antonelli was the curator of the exhibition Material Ecology, which collected some of Oxman's most relevant works, such as the Silk Pavilion, a dome three meters in diameter woven by worms.
Material ecology is the term that Oxman likes to define his work, the path of design inspired by nature and nature created by design. Her parents, renowned architects in Israel, transmitted to her the love for art while she was training as an air force pilot. Inside a supersonic plane with missiles that can break mountains, he was aware of the creative and destructive capacity of the human being. After rising to the rank of lieutenant he decided to study medicine. After two years the human anatomy fell short for the organism he really wanted to dissect: the planet. That's how he came to architecture.
After receiving two of the most prestigious design awards in the United States, such as the National Design Awards (2018) and the Vilcek Prize (2014), the architect has begun a new adventure with her company Oxman, an atelier of biologists, engineers, beekeepers, worms, bees that represent the Age of Entanglement that she professes. "In the future the buildings will not be built, they will be cultivated," he says. Initiatives such as covering constructions with melanin – a material as old as dinosaurs – to block ultraviolet rays, or crystals with microorganisms that produce energy from the sun, are part of the portfolio. The search for materials has gone hand in hand with new technologies such as 3D glass printers or robotic arms that in 10 years he expects the new generation of cities to begin.
"[Neri's] ability to combine design and science is amazing. It has a unique ability to anticipate the future. It's a gift to the planet," says Harvard University professor of biochemistry and systems biology Pamela Silver, one of the world's most influential researchers of synthetic biology.
Oxman has just become a mother, an offshoot of her life tree that has reaffirmed her commitment to the future. From the panoramic terrace of his office in Manhattan, he observes the jungle of cement and steel that extends at his feet. One of his projects is to recover part of the essence of primitive Manhattan, as biodiverse as Yellowstone Park. In the models, giant mushrooms like stadiums coexist with skyscrapers.
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