Live Talk with Neri Oxman

it's good to see you mary and um we'll have about one hour to speak about hopefully many different issues um i'm sure most of the guests know you but just to give a short introduction for the records you were born and raised in israel you first studied medicine in israel and then changed to architecture in jerusalem then it's the architectural association where you graduated then you changed to mit joining the phd program you became a professor at mit in 2010 um you founded the mediated meta group you received a lot of awards um in the last years you gave a wonderful text speech in 2015 and i think you're really one of the people in design architecture and research which have changed the rules in the last years of how things are created about how we think about creation per se and i hope we'll have the occasion to speak about that about these different attitudes of how things can come into life and can be created and yeah i think also your biography gives us a lot of connecting points to speak about interesting questions at the moment you have an exhibition at moma which yourself mentioned as a very important point in your career uh and i would also like to speak about what you meant by that i read you see it as a transition of previous research into new contexts new as you called it real world application um so i'm really curious to hear more about that but maybe let's start with some basics and what what is on view at the exhibition now you're showing projects from the last 15 years from all of all of those phases yeah previous research so first of all thank you matteo and thank you everyone i see all the hearts and i'm loving it um i i i'm really really thankful to to to have this opportunity to talk to you and to uh share um you know some of some of my thoughts my team's thoughts about the the previous work we've done sort of where we've been who we are and where we're going um and i think starting with moma actually moma is sort of the starting point and in a way my sort of the the my relationship with paula started so many years ago in 2007 when we worked on the design design in the elastic mind and the work shown in material ecology really uh uh includes the the breadth of work uh that we created over the past i would say 15 to 20 years um so it's sort of a an end point but also a starting point for a new beginning a new thing thinking about about the future um paula is not a uh a a uh yeah she's a very very special curator she's as you so many of you know and so many of you have known paula and she's a creator curator i think she she thinks about curation as an act of creation uh and curation for her is very much an act of design and what paula did with this show material ecology uh where she presents our work uh um you know that that spans such a a wide range of projects and technologies and a timeline um she decided to not include applications not include any objects in the in the exhibition so you know we didn't have you know no chairs no wearables uh and no sort of fully fledged architectural structures these were as paula calls them demos these were expressions of processes expressions of technology um and what was interesting is paula her decision was so bold in that uh you know i think it is a lot asking from a visitor to an exhibition in design uh to enter without and leave the expectation to see a design product at the door uh and really what it is is a collection of technologies and and and i say with confidence that there's not a single product that we've created in my group for which we did not create the technology and that is a very very important point when you enter our work and try to understand it the relationship between product and process is incredibly uh and very tightly linked and paula embraced that vision and so the show which which i hope many of you can visit still till october 18th is this compendium of tools and technologies uh exploring different material systems and what we can do with them um for for looking into the future it looks like a laboratory no it's it's a it's a place with samples with technologies that you develop for the projects that are shown but i think it's a very smart choice of paola um and of you too to really see it as this collection of raw material right and and ideas that can be used in different directions maybe showing objects would also limit the view of the visitor or the understanding of the potential that is in those technologies to a single application but probably you want to think about them as a very open field of possibilities and the the kaiden objects offer not only the possibility of creating one type of objects it's a technology it's a material that you could use for various other applications right yeah it is very much a lab um and and and paula and her team um uh attempted to bring and and i should credit anna uh who worked closely with with paula on this show so both paula and anna attempted to um bring us as close as possible the vision of the show to what it is to be in our lab at the media lab uh and and that included you know the various libraries we always create a kind of a cabinet of curiosities for each of the projects that we create and i think for most of the projects shown at moma we do have a kind of a library of experiments or a cabinet of curiosities that takes the viewer through the process that we've been through uh before and while we were creating the technology so for example with the silk pavilion you can see all of the small scale experiments that we did with silkworms in collaboration uh prior to engaging um the large-scale project that's that's super interesting and that was one thing i was going to ask you about because the city pavilion is probably uh your most famous project so far although there are a few others that are super widely published and will be able to speak about but the silk pavilion you were mentioning already in the ted talk that this pavilion combines for you these two worlds that you want to merge right it's the let's call it the cartesian rationalist world the engineering world which is represented in a structure that is created by a robot a woven structure um and on that structure you place those silk worms uh which are doing their own work uh so you let nature grow on the engineered structure can you tell us a little bit more about what how how did you develop that idea i mean first of all you have to have the idea of using silkworms to fabricate something for you and then i'm sure it involved a lot of research in biology and behavior of those warms how was the process so taking you back to 2012 actually 2010 when i gave my job talk at mit i was applying to a faculty position i had i was asked the question what what will be your first project and i i did have a sil cocoon in my pocket uh and i took the silkicon out of the the pocket and i said we're going to study the silkworms and build uh build a silk dome and the reason my love for self worms uh came you know at the time we were looking at additive manufacturing and 3d printing technologies and i thought wow the silkworm is sort of the best uh embodiment of a an organism that so elegantly transcends all the limitations of 3d printing it transcends the material bottleneck it you know it spins with one of the most supreme superior materials there are on the planet it transcends the gantry size limitation because it creates a you know a house in which to live in that's bigger than the size of the gantry of its body and it transcends the process limitation in that it doesn't quote unquote spin in layers but it spins in three dimensions and so i was personally fascinated with how such organisms uh like the silkworms later the bees and other organisms that we've looked into go about creating these incredible material architectures that are not made of assemblies of objects this is usually how we humans design but rather are made of continuous materials and those materials vary their properties constantly continuously mechanical properties optical properties chemical properties physiological et cetera et cetera et cetera and so the fascination was one that uh that i see all the notes they're wonderful that had to do with uh um process uh and uh processing of material and so we started to look at the silkworms uh we actually if you look at the first silk pavilion we actually had a video where we um 3d scanned the uh the cocoon and we said great this one million or so point cloud we can feed into the robotic arm and then scale up the cocoon and that um of course ended up with a a a a complete disaster but it got us to create a new a new kind of technology any kind of patent that we called free-form printing when we went back to the drawing board uh we were sort of sitting uh together uh by the by the lab thinking how can we in three months this was our deadline produce a pavilion with the help of these wonderful creatures and we've noticed that in the absence of a vertical axis meaning a table corner or a tree branch the silkworm will go about spinning its cocoon but in flat patches not a three-dimensional cocoon it's still the same one mile worth of silk uh but it's a flat patch and and the metamorphosis was entirely natural and that's when the eureka moment hit us wow how is it that we're boiling these cocoons and silk farms across the world um and and and yet we're not utilizing uh utilizing is the wrong word but we're not co-fabricating and cohabitating with them together while uh enabling them to to undergo a healthy metamorphosis and silk two the one you see in moment the one that was commissioned by paula and anna and their team uh was sort of taking that idea forward we had not a uh what was it uh um not uh 5 000 or so silk worms this was equal to the silk road in in terms of a trajectory but we had uh you know fifteen thousand seven hundred and thirty two silkworm silkworms for the second pavilion i happen to remember the number uh which is rarely the case but this is twice the length of the china wall right this is a huge length of silk that when combined together is is worthy of many shirts you know for which for each shirt we create out of silk we waste we waste we kill uh uh 1000 silkworms on average so the project really started to ask questions that are not only associated with structural optimization and how to utilize a collaboration between a robot a human and an organism but it started to to become a vehicle for ethical questions along the lines of you know why are most designs human-centric how can we think about you know treating all species as equal is that even a relevant question for architects and if so why and so we started taking taking this to the next level going back to the structure yes we built a jig and you can see it in the video in our website it was horizontally situated we went all the way to italy um and sorry for i i hope you're you're enjoying the description because we we most definitely found it challenging um in america at that time we did not have silkworms to work with uh the united states was um uh all the silicones in the united states has had what was called the nuclear polyhydrosis virus npv uh i hope i'm pronouncing the the the name correctly but this virus basically uh um uh it creates a pathological condition the silicone so we took the team to italy and in paduava uh in the beautiful mountains of near paduvah beautiful beautiful area near paduva we found this incredible woman with an incredible silk lab um silvia capelotsi and we formed a beautiful collaboration uh where we were in her center of epiculture and and serie culture where we were working with healthy silkworms that were if you remember the original silk pavilion you know which fedex ordered the silkworms online here we were working with silkworms that were fed with organic mulberry leafs uh i mean the the way the trees were uh were grown was it was without pesticides etc so that project really took silk one to a completely different level in terms of i would say not only aesthetics but also ethics it's super interesting to hear that pre-history or that history behind the object you know and so um i think that's that's what you call working working with nature no or editing it rather than um working against it and i think it becomes very obvious when we understand all the the questions that are raised during the process which goes down until um how do we uh treat the silk worms where do we get that from um and i think that is that's a holistic approach that um that is super important to understand um so it's not only about the pavilion and the new structural uh object but uh creating a whole new process right exactly uh what was most most interesting was the the jig was actually about 10 meters long about five meters in diameter and the jig kept rotating um so every 15 minutes we had a full rotation of this entirely very large structure and as it rotated the silkworms were climbing up vertically on the structure the jig of course rotated um uh you know um using electronics and technology but but there was uh what was so fascinating about the project for us was that kind of moment of collaboration between us the designers between the uh the jig the robot um and the silkworms themselves there were three different structures there was the jig itself which was designed by us of course um and there there was an intermediate layer we designed as well which was a water-soluble mesh and on that water-soluble mesh uh the silkworms were positioned uh and over the duration of several weeks uh we've built this uh we've spun this large pavilion with the silkworms and interestingly the rotations basically facilitated the movement of the silkworms on the structure such that we can get an even more or less even distribution of silk on the structure there were also holes that were carved into the structure to guide better the environmental conditions to release some of the structural tension in the structure but what was interesting is that over time we started seeing these little holes in the soluble mesh and those little holes were the result of the natural metabolism of the silkworms themselves so just excretions of the silkworms that were creating these little holes we really saw this kind of quote-unquote metabolic resume and interestingly the holes that were created as a result of the metabolic resume uh released tension in the structure an assistant in the overall structural optimization and that was a really interesting moment even philosophically for us to sort of uh come to terms with how that kind of collaboration it was truly a collaboration between us and these wonderful creatures could assist in sort of structural optimization in larger scale um just enabling those silicones to metamorphosize naturally um let's move on to another project which is also in the exhibition which is the the ocean pavilion and the the agua um project um if i understand it right the agua is somehow a continuation of the ocean pavilion idea right so yes that's correct you start with the the material of kaiden which is one single material and later you get to bio composites where you combine different materials um so what i found interesting here is that you spoke about different qualities that you can reach and combine within one single material with a means of 3d printing so you can really control the graduation of um density probably also of color of static static qualities so what what does that mean on a technological level can you uh control that when it's 3d printed can you tell us something about it absolutely so just taking one step back what you saw in silk you see in glass and you know silk fibers and glass uh bio um biomaterials or biopolymers with with the agoaca and the ocean pavilion and then hybrid living materials with vespers so i think in all of our projects all the works that you will visit in the exhibition have that in common that notion that we're using a single material system and we're varying the properties of that material system globally and locally to produce both the overall form of the structure and the the the behavior the performance of the structure whether it be structural performance environmental performance or combination thereof now in aguajoja it's true we had you know we had the first pavilion and then we had two other um the first prevalent was sort of a demonstration of a few of these of these uh uh surface second one we designed for the cooper hewitt they were exploring different things but essentially both of them were made and designed um using the most abundant biopolymers on the planet um so kitazin is one of them cellulose pectin um and some calcium carbonate and and the variation of these materials again this is not about material selection at all you know this is not about the kind of traditional oh let's look at the ashby chart and let's choose this composite with this kind of wood in this kind of metal no let's create these materials from scratch and let's create uh and inform their molecular behavior uh to instigate uh structural behavior on an architectural scale that's you know that's a big deal that's why you know you get phds so just as an example one of the things we've discovered that informed the structures as as your question suggests um was a robotically informed material anisotropy so we found uh materials anisotropy basically uh uh allows us to control the distribution of forces in the material thereby impart structural and environmental behavior and we discovered that the robotic arm we designed that allowed us to mix between material composition actually uh contributed to the alignment of crystalline structures over the surface area that informed the structural behavior so that was fascinating for us you know the ability that you're creating molecular scale uh molecular scale maneuvers mediations that inform the overall scale of the structure so chemistry informing architecture as opposed to the other other way around in the creation of a new technology the robotic arm itself uh the way it worked is that there was a mixing chamber uh that allowed you to uh to uh to uh mix between the various uh compositions um and once the shape was once the structure was printed these were mostly the skin elements of the structures they were left to find their shape in contact with air so sort of hydration guided self-assembly if you may um and the the obviously the type of pattern that was inscribed in the structure obviously informed how that structure would later fold or unfold and so self-assembly self-organization a very heavy and deep dive into understanding material properties and all of these come together to create the the uh the robot that enables us to create this pavilion what's also interesting is that in a way the designer has moved outside and the robotic arm quote-unquote does it all because we sort of we found out that for example the type of pressure that we assign to the robotic arm uh can inform um the uh thickness of the structural member uh and so you can connect a finite element analysis structural calculation to the robotic arm um you know to the jet that sort of the pump that's assigning the pressure and create the structure quote-unquote for free uh taking out the designer out of the equation of course this is not the case uh but but jorge and my team developed an entire phd called fabrication information modeling fim that was dedicated specifically to this theory and and practice yeah so um when when we go back to the initial um question you know you mentioned that this moma exhibition um means an important um phase in your career i heard out of that quotation of yours that there is a desire to take this a step further and to now see what applications can there be for these technologies of course you have already demonstrated applications for building structures for creating certain types of objects but if you look into the future of those technologies and those applications where do you see fields that you would like to to test on where this could be applied yeah so i think um it's it's a it's a challenging question of course because there's sort of a matrix of on the x dimension you have size and scale and on the y dimension you have complexity and um and some of these technologies can be implemented in the real world sooner rather than later whereas others will take more time to develop so for example also the smaller you go in application the faster you can implement generally speaking um this is not the case for all the technologies but generally speaking so for example the technology we developed for uh for the death masks for vespers that is shown at again we started with death masks and we ended with a a real world technology to that explores what it means to incorporate life in within objects um the technology that we've created there called hybrid living materials hlms can find a home in um in biomedicine in pharmaceuticals and cosmeceuticals in um and and in the medical industry specifically tissue engineering because there what we've shown is that we can utilize um printing to incorporate enzymes as the printed matter within the object and actuate activate the object uh using chemical signals uh and incorporating synthetically engineered microorganisms in the objects so the object really comes to life um and and what's what's interesting is that the quantum code coming to life can be templated at the resolution of the printer so 16 to 20 microns um so they're the applications the real world applications are um i would say medical industry especially associated with product product scale uh the glass printer i could see applied at the architectural scale and having uh having uh serious implications potentially uh for the built environment architectural design and urban design especially if we can push ahead our ability to design vessels pockets and channels that can harness solar energy and to sort of revisit the way we think about facade engineering from the bottom up that would be very very exciting yeah that would be my next question you know you're not you don't seem a person that is driven just by technology and just trying it out as a purpose per se but um seeing it in a in a global context so what are the ideas that are driving you the potential that you see i suppose it it will be linked to sustainability is it about using less material is it about having manufacturing processes which consume less energy i think these could be um goals that you reach with those approaches and that at the end have a real impact in how we use objects but also probably the life cycle they have if you think about materials that degradate biologically it's interesting so i would say all of those things but when when an engineer you know when an engineer approaches these questions question questions associated with sustainable design and sustainability in general the engineer you know i i always say the difference between the engineer and the designer designers a little bit like the salad and the soup the engineer designs a system that is a whole that is made of the sum of its parts the engineer knows how to put the system together and how to take it apart the engineer also approaches the the challenge from a problem-solving perspective the designer however approaches the problem from from a problem-seeking perspective so how can we explore how can we less problem solve more problems seek um using or creating solutions we never know you know existed or or or offering solutions to problems we never knew existed which is very much in the spirit of the media lab um i think that so going back to the soup the designer creates a hole that is bigger than the sum of its parts and again we started with a death mask right we started with a project that was incredibly abstract and this was part of the intention was to release the pressure from needing to answer a question or solve a problem it was just for the sake of exploring how to create a leaving a living product and we started with the death mask because we thought you know this this would be sort of the uh untouched territory no one would ask us for the function of the death mask so it would be considered more as an abstract project then we ended up with a real world technology hybrid living materials that enabled us um to incorporate living organisms inside a product and then came the application uh tissue engineering creating products uh that that are able to respond adapt et cetera uh and so i think it i think in in our case the technology sort of offers uh offers the the uh how should reveals uh the design opportunities as we as we move forward without with our projects it's not that we identify a problem or challenge and work backwards but we start with a process and we discover what are the different products and challenges that we can you know approach resolve revisit um well you worked a lot with 3d printing um you created a 3d printer that for the first time was able to print optically transparent glass um and uh also 3d printing with kaiden etc were really completely different approaches to this technology um to my understanding you know there was a certain phase where a lot of designers um also product designers were experimenting with 3d printing around 2010 12 15. as far as i see the the hype around the technology has gone down a little bit what i found interesting is that yet um there's still a lot of progress being made but maybe it's progress which is more behind the scenes which is more which is you know less spectacular it's not about printing the first 3d printed chair anymore but finding different materials developing different or speeding up the process as well yeah how do you see the future of that technology on a long-term basis yeah it's interesting because many identify us as a 3d printing group which which we don't at all 3d printing happens to be there uh as a technology that offers a way to approach uh single material systems as opposed to assemblies and once you understand that you understand you know you understand the group it's not about 3d printing it's about finding ways to create design and deploy single material systems um that that display or that embody variation in properties as a function of structural environmental even social constraints without needing to assemble and and that is very much in line with nature's way of course the ultimate the ultimate path is of course to explore growth um and and so when you approach the work through that lens uh it you know you can use a laser cutter or a water jet cutter or you know you can use a later cut a laser cutter on um on a elastic plastic based material to to explore sewing don't try that at home but but but you could sort of think about a printer as a milling machine in a milling machine uh as a as an additive manufacturing tool you just it's just a a question of how you position yourself relative to that technology um i think yeah i think look the future there is a future for 3d printing i think especially if these companies developing printers uh approach the biggest problem which is the biggest bottleneck which is materials and uh and then take it to the next level now do i think we should 3d print buildings entirely no absolutely not um do you know and and we see a lot of examples of of such of such technologies that basically are designed to build and deploy in the same manner in which we did 100 years ago but that's not the point here the point is how can we utilize technology to think differently about the typologies of products or buildings that were created to sort of offered new uh new ways of thinking about what is a wall what you know what is a space uh what is a membrane how can we can we contain and and when you think about that you can sort of juxtapose pompidou which was the sort of the machine in the garden with i i think i want to to say our approach which is the garden and the machine you know how to think about uh using or developing technologies that can allow us to create this kind of synergy and harmony uh with the natural world in speaking its language well you know i also um this approach also becomes visible in this comparison that you mentioned the silkworm as a as a natural 3d printer right so you can also go beyond the machine and and just see natural processes as something that deliver the same when you learn their code when you understand how to redesign rules of of a game of behavior but still based on an ethical um background where you you're aware that you have to do with um uh living beings um and i also like the the the metaphor that you used i think in your ted talk where you were speaking about the uh the tree and the fruits that become one right that you think about um uh creating objects where you minimize connections um but you you reach a a monolithic structure which is easier to produce and i think that has been a very old dream of modern design i mean also in the 20th century they have been designers who thought about you know the single shaped objects think about verna pantone's chair which is made of one piece of plastic and this idea of minimizing production steps and minimizing the energy you need for producing something by conceiving the object as a as a whole i think has been an old vision in design and i think you're really getting very very close to that to that ideal with new technologies yeah um when we look i'm interested in the inspirations that you that brought you there because um you know over the past let's say 100 years there have been designers architects who have been thinking about learning from nature you showed images of buckminster fuller that you compared to your sub pavilion i have to think about fry otto the german architect of course and when we spoke a few days ago you were mentioning where the building on our museum campus are there certain personalities in design history where you would say these people have given you a lot of inspiration and a new direction in your work i think for me it has definitely been black mr fuller for sure since since i was um you know a young student uh i've always found inspiration in bucky fuller especially in his um synergism and and and in his not having fear of of making science and having respect for science uh and uh and and also uh the the ability to approach design as an act of science is an act of of not only the creation of space and culture but the creation of knowledge that then obviously uh uh transforms how we think about spaces and places um so for me bucky fuller definitely and and then in in many many ways norman as well norman foster and how he took this legacy and very different obviously than than my own and and my teams uh but uh in thinking about how um every level of the building in this case perhaps more the building is a machine less as a garden but every element of the building uh is designed with the same kind of rigor uh the materiality of the building the the furniture in the building the the spaces the and there's also this this kind of sense that sustainability is not uh not a problem it's an opportunity i think in both in both of their work both bucky and and uh and norman's work so they have been definitely i mean they're they're other heroes i i always you know i look up to liz i i find her so stimulating intellectually i find her argumentation and sort of using or or the ability to kind of question certain cultural uh uh norms through through architecture through her work and her team's work i find so so exciting um and then there's of course zaha and and and her incredible uh her incredible drawings and paintings and and whether it be art or technology or or cinematography uh those kind of ex channels of expressions i find are so so very important to um to to to the practice of architecture because we need to sort of leave to to come back um when you started to to um your career as an architect you started to study in israel it in london in boston um late 1990s early 2000s that was also the time of parametric architecture right so where of computational design became really visible both in the process of designing buildings but also in the shape they had zaha was an early example but i think she also came from the background of constructivism and not only from computational design but really from understanding uh composition and so on but was this was this tendency of parametric architecture something in your early career that brought you towards wanting to become an architect i i think your parents also are architects right yeah that that's right so yeah so both my parents are architects and um you know i i had the the um the great privilege of of you know studying in in a science school in medical school and then studying in an architectural school the technion the architectural association in london and then um and then studying in an engineering school so i've had the the privilege privilege to sort of uh explore design through these different lenses science um engineering and architecture and design um and uh i i always wanted to be a doctor i i i applied and was accepted to medical school and and stayed there for um almost three years when i realized that it wasn't meant to be uh and and i dropped out and joined architecture and and that was a you know it was a love affair to to to enter to enter design um i i think that in you you talked about parametric design when i came to the aaa it was all about parametricity of course everybody was doing parametric design and and i think that really inspired and informed the path forward because what was lacking i thought was a kind of sensitivity towards the material practice there was a lot of focus on form and on shape first so shape first material later um and and that sort of inspired me questions about uh that kind of dimensional mismatch between the physical environment and the digital environment and the biological environment uh and so um and so i think that that's sort of what triggered me towards the phd which then focused on material-based design computation and that was i think in 2005 and in 2007 already there were works of yours in in the moma exhibition um right so so it went very fast i think and what you combined then was was really this interest in parametricity but as you mentioned also probably inspirations from bucky fuller and this deeper interest in understanding natural structures and i think i i really see these tendencies coming together in in your work when when was the moment where you very you really started to create those first biology inspired structures was it at mit after having studied started the phd program do you remember that yeah it was actually at the architectural association um in 2000 the early 2000s i think it was 2002 um when my my first uh thesis there um was was dedicated to helical structures in nature actually uh and uh and it was called performative morphologies and the idea was that you would or could use a an interface a digital interface to form generate based on environmental and material conditions so on the one hand you would have the environment on the other hand you would have mature constraints and you would feed those into the computer sort of separate objective functions and then you would get quote unquote to form for free and so i toyed with with some of these ideas for the duration of my diploma at the architectural association and and that thesis performative morphologies later uh what was the foundation for for the phd okay and um then you had an incredible uh 15 years in the last 15 years you uh must have worked like crazy on all those different projects it's really yes what kind of output you you produced and i imagine that's also a partly teamwork uh you mentioned that you work with biologists with uh material engineers how how do we have to imagine that collaboration how does that work i mean if you 3d print with pectin and with kaiden does the biologist come to the table and say well here i have some kaiden or i had some shrimps um so i have some leftovers couldn't we 3d print with that how does it work practically yeah it sounds easy right but it's so it's so so it's the opposite of easy and it's true it's been uh 15 20 years of of non-stop work uh and and it looks wonderful and and and uh vivacious and uh and sort of intellectually uh rich but but that obviously took a a a a very very long time in writing all these papers and publishing i always tell my my my team members you know we want to show up at you know on on the cover of nature of science or science but we also want to be it and palace show at the moment and and that kind that has pushed us uh our team i think forward on on both fronts the art the science the engineering uh all through the lens of design of course and the team is everything the team is every the team is the family that enables that kind of life and that means you work together you live together in in a way professionally so not literally but you really share uh so much with each other and um and i think uh you know we've always thought we've thought about the group as a kind of noah's ark more or less two of each uh and and even within those two when you think about biology you have a biological engineer and a biological scientist even between them there's a lot of productive friction uh one is looking at biology as a science the other is looking at it as a set of available technologies um and and that's a very very interesting way of exploring a topic um the way i've set up the the group is um uh is sort of based on the framework of the krebs cycle of creativity the idea that one the input for one domain becomes the output for another so if you think about science science converts information into knowledge um and then from science to uh to engineering engineering converts knowledge into utility design takes that utility and creates new creations that sort of challenge our perception of space and then an artist looks at reality and changes our changes the actual perception of of reality and and then the cycle continues so some of our team members have are sort of are focused on one domain they're either scientists or they're engineers other team members are more um feel very comfortable uh traversing these domains uh but working together i think when we start with a material system we explore it uh for for the potential scientific opportunities for the potential engineering how can we shape that materials in new ways and and and what might the impact of such processes be etc um it's it's almost like conducting an orchestra i imagine yes in an orchestra that plays uh tunes which are really uh which have never been played you know so it's it's really uh it's hard work it's hot no one ever asks about it but it is hard work i i totally imagine i totally understand um if you look in the future at the future are there certain projects um or studies that would be like dream projects you know where you would really er a scale in which you would love to work or a certain maybe even a commission that you would love to get where you would test new grounds or work with existing processes in a different context is there something you would dream of it's maybe less of a dream project and more of a dream practice uh and that dream practice is is a practice where nature is the single client um and what does a practice like this look like how you know how do you fundraise for practice like that and what does a client look like so this is the the question that you asked about a dream product maybe this has been sort of my dream question um that that will hopefully lead to to the dream commissions um but uh but what what does it mean uh to design with nature as your client uh what does it mean to design uh where you're considering all species as equals uh um so these are questions that i've been thinking about uh almost i want to say rigorously over the past months in setting up a new practice and and we are actually in the process of launching a new company um and and you can see some of our work in oxmoor.com uh were uh and obviously the work of mediated matter uh at moma uh were in the process of launching um launching a new practice and um and i'm excited to to reconnect in the official in you know the moment of the launch uh but yeah how what are those kind of products uh should we design products for a nature that exists without humans i don't know these are questions i've been thinking about um watching the news and sort of following very very closely the trajectory of climate change i mean speaking about the last month um uh you also were in that situation in new york uh in the lockdown um and you were mentioning that you i mean in your career you had a deeper look into biology you wanted to become a doctor what is your perspective on what has happened in the last months did that even change your attitude towards design further has that opened new new worlds that you are thinking about to me it seems nearly i mean what you're describing and your work of the past 15 years seems to anticipate a lot of the sensibility that people have now developed in the during the lockdown but i'm sure also for you this has brought a lot of new uh ideas can you can you tell us about that yeah such a beautiful question i think it anticipated with luxury right i had the luxury of being in an academic institution where i still am and exploring open-ended questions but but then when you sort of contextualize that in a company uh or or an organization uh it you know it becomes hard okay what are the actual acts of translation uh that can have an impact uh not in creating one or two or even twenty beautiful buildings but in completely redefining the design industry if i may call it such as such from the bottom up entirely for the world at large and how can we make an impact that is beyond uh you know beyond designing you know a beautiful chair and and don't get me wrong i still get turned on by a beautiful chair and i i you know i and i love uh you know you have to excuse me yeah you don't have same skills i'm fine but but but there is sort of this bigger and more perhaps uh urgent um uh force in me um that uh that actually showed up when i became a mother and and sort of was emphasized uh under quarantine where hold on that there is a limit to time uh this is it right if we pass the 600 ppm in you know if we we surpassed that in by 2025 actually all health breaks loose and the fires and and the pandemics are just you know are just first indications of what lies around the corner uh to me it's beautiful that you say that the work anticipated that and i appreciated that i appreciate that i think i was operating more from the place of a group of artists i think now we're sort of we were looking to move people to to to even trigger an emotional um response in people wake up look at what is possible um but but but now there's this responsibility to to think even bigger uh on and how to make an impact hence uh thinking about you know the launching of this new company um yeah it's a different kind of existence uh it's uh it's sort of you know living in in dog years as opposed to women years it's it's a it's it's sort of a call to arms and a wake-up call to uh you know it's it's very nice to be able to sit in your drawing board and by your drawing board and design a beautiful object in the computer but but design has to move beyond the object to the system you know designers cannot no longer commit their talent to to the design of a finite product or a finite building it has to be more you know if we're to survive on this planet and even if this planet is to survive with us which it will of course um but these are these are some questions that i've been asking myself over the past months and uh and of course the relationship and and you know i may be criticized for that but i do believe in the intricate relationship between uh how we've treated the environment and the uh and the appearance of the pandemics and i think there's absolutely an intimate link between climate change and um and and the pandemics uh and that is expressed in many levels many organisms many species and we can talk about it in another time but but there's definitely this kind of connection between environmental forces and and viral viral uh appearances and forces that shape our life and world well you i mean you you were mentioning it before that um you could you can either design or work against nature and that's what we see in climate change as a result and i think this was also at the beginning of pandemics that we that we do not respect certain limits of uh where we live how we live what we eat and um and then these processes in nature start to get out of control and start to turn against us and what you're proposing is designing with nature understanding it understanding its processes and rather trying to work with it which i think is a model opposed to what we see now in its consequences um that was um also already one of the questions that our on the audience sent um actually where someone asked us how did kovitz affect your work so you you already answered that i just looked at the questions that some people said because we said we're taking some questions so another one i like because it's nicely old-fashioned it's what book would you recommend to any student or designer you know it's not a blog it's a not a website it's a book and you as a as a very progressive person i like to ask you that question so on growth and form and war and peace maybe it would be my my my picks um uh so i i grew up with darcy thompson i often uh often revisit uh on growth and form and there's a wealth of knowledge there my thesis sort of revisit chapter five and created a phd out of that theory of transformations in a material context but there's so much more so many more pieces to be written um so that that would be one and then war and peace you know understanding human nature accepting it working with it loving it the the hardship the challenges um and and understanding the design is not a material practice per se it is you know it it is a practice that involves humans it involves other species it involves materials it involves social forces and environmental forces and it's the practice of living uh you know and leading with with the heart and and it's uh and and i think we're now as designers we're at a point where we can't we cannot afford uh not to look at the bigger picture you know there's this this inner uh um urge to to change to make an impact uh for the good and now uh it's such a challenging time for the planet is there such wonderful closing remarks mary thank you so much matteo thank you everyone and i apologize that i was a minute late and um and thank you everyone for for tuning in thank you mary for having been with us

Channel: Vitra Design Museum

Views: 9,867

Rating: 4.9802957 out of 5

Keywords: Neri Oxman, design, interview, Instagram Live, Talk, Mateo Kries, Vitra Design Museum, design research, exhibition, MoMA, material ecology, science, sustainability

Id: rqvR51uEfsA

Length: 57min 38sec (3458 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020