Many contemporary designers are fascinated by the concept of form and, when they set to create something – be it an object, a garment, accessory or even a building – they prefer to focus on the shape of that particular piece, without considering matter and materials. The fact that our world also favours digital representations to physical reality also means that we often tend to naturally separate form and matter and to keep our focus on the former.
Architect, designer, inventor and professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab Neri Oxman is instead fascinated by all sorts of processes of materialisation and in particular by the new frontiers and perspectives of material science.
In her 20-year career she has been developing new materials and innovative processes that, inspired by a mix of disciplines comprising architecture, biology, design, science, engineering and technology, combine environmentally aware computational form-generation and material fabrication.
With the intent of exploring these fields further, Oxman created The Mediated Matter Group at the MIT Media Lab and coined the definition "Material Ecology", a process bringing together materials science, digital fabrication technologies and organic design to produce techniques, objects, wearable pieces and installations informed by the structural, systemic, and aesthetic wisdom of nature.
This concept is at the core of an exhibition that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is dedicating to the designer and inventor.
"Neri Oxman: Material Ecology" (February 22nd through May 25th, 2020) is organised by Paola Antonelli, a senior curator in the Department of Architecture and Design, and Director of Research and Development at MoMA, with the collaboration of Anna Burckhardt, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA.
MoMA has been an early Oxman fan: her collection "Materialecology", that featured four speculative objects exploring the intrinsic qualities of natural structures, was included in a 2008 exhibition at the museum. Immediately after the event, the institution purchased the works for its permanent collection. 
The exhibition looks at Oxman's methodology and approach to Material Ecology via installations, processes and samples, displayed alongside videos that highlight the science behind each piece and each production process.
Oxman's projects always start inspecting nature: to create new design and production processes, Oxman and her team analyse elements such as the bark of trees, the characteristics of crustaceans' shells and the crabs' skeletal system, the behavior of silkworms and the flow of human breath.
GLASS from Mediated Matter Group on Vimeo.
Oxman's fans will be able to rediscover at the MoMA exhibition multifunctional projects "Glass I" and "Glass II" (2015 and 2017) and "Totems" (2019).
The glass structures on display are created via a large-scale, additive manufacturing technology for 3D printing optically transparent glass structures at architectural dimensions (G3DP and G3DP2). Nobody before Oxman and her team ever 3D printed glass in this way and this project synthesizes modern technologies with age-old established glass tools and technologies, producing novel structures with numerous potential applications.
GLASS II from Mediated Matter Group on Vimeo.
"Totems" speculates upon designers' abilities to chemically synthesize melanin – the pigment of life. Totem-like glass structures are initiated with tyrosinase, an enzyme from a mushroom whose reaction allows for melanin to be synthesized. Apart from digital fabrication and design computation in this project there is also a study on chemical reaction dynamics.
The project, commissioned as part of the XXII Triennale di Milano "Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival" (2019), demonstrates melanin production at an architectural scale for specific environmental contexts, but also poses intriguing questions, wondering who owns biological colour.
The enterpiece of the exhibition is a new site-specific installation commissioned by MoMA – the "Silk Pavilion II", a follow-up to a similar installation launched in 2013. the pavilion is a geodesic dome made out of silk fibers, woven by a robotic arm using an algorithm that assigns a single continuous thread across patches providing various degrees of density.
Over 6,500 silkworms, positioned at the bottom rim of the robotically manufactured initial structure composed of non-woven silk patches, were tasked with filling the gaps. This project mixes Oxman's fascination with digital and biological fabrication at the architectural scale, as the silkworms are employed as if they were biological 3D printers, they are the agents and the constructors, but also the architects of this structure.
Aguahoja from Mediated Matter Group on Vimeo.
Other projects in the exhibition include the "Vespers" death masks that drive the formation of new life as they are conceived as habitats for microorganisms, and "Aguahoja" (2018), a biocompatible structure composed of the most abundant biopolymers on our planet – cellulose, chitosan and pectin.
Derived from shrimp shells and fallen leaves, these materials were 3D printed by a robot, shaped by water and augmented with natural pigments to create bio-compatible composites with functional mechanical, chemical and optical property gradients.
The materials can be used to digitally produce structures and objects that embody the lightness and flexibility – as well as the biodegradability – of leaves and wings, and the toughness of seashells. Oxman and her team created two Aquahoja pavilions designed to demonstrate how such a structure can respond to their environments, communicating with them and biodegrading in them.
One thing that will struck many visitors is the fact that Oxman's projects often focus on objects and structures designed to look as if they had grown of their own accord, and weren't built by human hand.
The exhibition, which celebrates interdisciplinary collaborations to create solutions for some of the key issues of our modern society, shouldn't be considered as a retrospective on Oxman's work so far, but as a catalogue of materials and processes that designers may be using in future.
Biomimicry has been the obsession of many artists, architects and even fashion designers for a while now, but Oxman seems to tell us that bio-informed design and a trio of processes – matter, fabrication, and environment – will rule the future of the design practice.
The final confirmation that she may be right? Until a few years ago Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group's researches seemed difficult to apply outside of the controlled environment of the lab, but the exhibition confirms that they may be ready to go out into the world and tell the wondrous tale of the living organisms that met the artificial machines.
Image credits for this post
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Aguahoja I. 2018. The Aguahoja Artifacts Display: A catalog of material experiments spanning four years of research shows the range of aesthetics and behaviors the group has been able to elicit in medium-to-large-scale prints via performative geometric toolpaths, generative design, bio-composite distributions, and variable fabrication parameters. Photo: The Mediated Matter Group. Courtesy The Mediated Matter Group
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Glass I. 2015. Courtesy The Mediated Matter Group
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Silk Pavilion. 2013. A Bombyx mori silkworm deposits silk fiber on a digitally fabricated scaffolding structure. Photo: The Mediated Matter Group. Courtesy The Mediated Matter Group
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Silk Pavilion. 2013. View through Silk Pavilion apertures as the silk worms skin the structure. Photo: The Mediated Matter Group. Courtesy The Mediated Matter Group
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Totems. 2018. Melanins are a group of pigments ranging in color from yellow to brown. The term "melanin" often refers to eumelanin, a particular type that is brown-black in color. However, other types, such as pheomelanin (yellow-red in color), also exist. This "library" represents the diversity of melanin, and includes constituent components of the reaction as well as melanin-containing natural materials, such as feathers and cuttlefish ink. Courtesy Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Totems. 2018. Produced by Stratasys, Ltd. Totems has been 3D printed to include six distinct liquid channels and pockets. Each pocket contains melanin from a different species, from bird to cuttlefish. Courtesy Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Totems. 2018. Architectural proposal for an environmentally responsive melanin infused structure. Created for Design Indaba. Rendering by Eric de Broche des Combes, Luxigon. The glass structure is designed to contain multiple strains of melanin, naturally obtained on site and biologically synthesized at the lab. It provides UV protection during the day, while enabling stargazing upon sunset. A first-of-its-kind biologically augmented facade, the structure is designed to protect endangered species on site and to celebrate the diversity of life on our planet. Courtesy Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Vespers. 2018. Series 1, Mask 5, front view. Designed for The New Ancient Collection. Curated and 3D printed by Stratasys. Photo: Yoram Reshef
Neri Oxman and The Mediated Matter Group. Lazarus. 2016. Produced by, and in collaboration with, Stratasys, Ltd. Courtesy The Mediated Matter Group