As if artist, designer, architect, educator and 3D printing aficionado Neri Oxman wasn’t distinguished enough, she goes and wins another award! To list off her impressive resume (Deep Breath): she’s MIT Media Lab’s Professor of Media Art and Sciences; her work Natural Artifice is in MoMA’a permanent collection; her work Imaginary Beings: Mythologies of the Not Yet was purchased by the Pompidou Centre; she’s had work featured at the Smithsonian; she was deemed “Revolutionary Mind” by SEED Magazine; was on the cover of Wired; was listed on Fast Company‘s 100 Most Creative People and ICON’s 20 most influential architects; received a 40 Under 40 Building Design + Construction Award, the International Earth Award for Future-Crucial Design, a METROPOLIS Next Generation Award, and a Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award. (Aaaand… Exhale)
Professor Oxman’s long list of accomplishments now includes winner of the $100,000 Vilcek Prize in Design. The Vilcek Prize is meant to draw attention to the work of foreign-born scientists and artists now living and working in the United States. The renaissance woman was raised in Israel and moved to the United States in 2005. She has made herself famous through her cross-breeding of organic designs with modern technology, creating models constrained by natural principles that are then 3D printed (and subsequently bought by big name galleries and museums).
You may have seen her work on 3DPI before. Two of her ensembles were featured at Paris Fashion Week in Iris van Herpen’s collection. Ari previously covered a SpiderBot project that she was working on, mimicking the fabrication techniques of the arachnid. And I believe that one of Rachel’s favorite works by the artist is Beast, her take on a Chaise Lounge, which Oxman describes as:
A single continuous surface, acting both as structure and as skin, is locally modulated for both structural support and corporeal aid. Beast combines structural, environmental, and corporeal performance by adapting its thickness, pattern density, stiffness, flexibility, and translucency to load, curvature, and skin-pressured areas respectively.
The woman is crazy for 3D printing, it seems, as the technology allows her to adequately explore the play between the organic and the digital. She is also the Stratasys (formerly Objet) Queen, relying on the manufacturer’s machines to produce her colorful and fluid artwork. Her prominence in the art world brings 3D printing up to the top with her, placing it alongside the accepted media for artistic expression.
Watch the artist discuss her process below:
Neri Oxman: On Designing Form from PopTech on Vimeo.
Source: Vilcek Foundation
