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Rediff.com  » Getahead » This Israeli-American architect is trending thanks to Brad Pitt

This Israeli-American architect is trending thanks to Brad Pitt

By Rediff Get Ahead Bureau
Last updated on: April 17, 2018 10:10 IST
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Neri Oxman is an award winning architect who combines technology with botany and life. A perfect example of 'beauty with brains'.

Neri Oxman 

Neri Oxman Photograph: Noah Kalina/Wikimedia Commons

 

Neri Oxman's name has popped up in the headlines these days as the 'rumoured girlfriend Brad Pitt is dating'.

But that doesn't remotely justify how super successful she is.

Oxman, 42 is a multi-award winning Israeli-American designer-architect. She is famously known for coining the term 'material ecology'.

The associate professor has a PhD in design computation and teaches media and arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The talented inventor combines concepts of design, biology and engineering to create products that can change colour, form and texture influenced by their natural behaviour.

Neri Oxman

Neri Oxman and Yoshihiro Sawa, managing officer, Toyota attend Milan Design Week 2017. Photograph: Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images

 

Oxman's stellar work has won her many titles and awards including Textile Spaces' 2015 Award for Mediated Matter's Silk Pavilion and Vilcek Prize in Design in 2014.

The magazine SEED called her a 'revolutionary mind' while Esquire listed her among the 'best and brightest'

Silk Pavilion, Oxman's patented technology, involved working with silkworms and robots to create a dome frame.

A robotic arm was programmed to imitate how silkworms deposit silk to form a cocoon. After the robotic arm created a panel, they were arranged in the form of a dome.

Nearly 6,500 silk worms were placed on this dome to deposit silk and complete the structure.

Silk Pavilion

A research team member places silk worms in a cocoon created by robots. Photo: Meditated Matter/MIT

 

"We've managed to motion-track the silkworm’s movement as it is building its cocoon," Oxman told Dezeen magazine in 2013. 

"Our aim was to translate the motion-capture data into a 3D printer connected to a robotic arm in order to study the biological structure in larger scales,” Oxman added.

The project proved how digital intervention in fabrication can do wonders to the industry.

Oxman is an highly influential international designer who's made her presence felt at the World Economic Forum and the White House.

Her TEDTalk on intersecting technology and biology in 2015 was viewed by over 19,00,000 people.

Besides her breakthrough ideas on design, technology and the future, Oxman is known also for her sharp wit and gift of gab.

Want to know her secret to good life?

"Never take the Solar System for granted and love the hell out of people," Oxman had tweeted. "That and dark chocolate."

 

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