Architect, Designer and Inventor
Trustee, The Pershing Square Foundation
Neri Oxman is an architect, designer, inventor, and Media Lab professor where she is the founding director of The Mediated Matter Group, an experimental design practice combining commissioned works with the creation of enabling technologies and scientific knowledge. Oxman pioneered the field of Material Ecology, which considers form generation, manufacturing, the environment and the material itself as inseparable dimensions of design. Oxman’s team operates at the intersection of computational design, digital fabrication, materials science and synthetic biology; and applies that knowledge to design across scales and disciplines, from micro to building scale.
Oxman’s work — documented in over 150 scientific publications and inventions — is included in permanent collections at MoMA, SFMOMA, Centre Pompidou, MFA, The Smithsonian Institution, and more. Her innovations have received recognition at the World Economic Forum where she is part of the Expert Network, and the White House. Since 2005, Oxman and her team have won numerous awards that have grown in international scope and acclaim. Among Oxman’s awards are the Vilcek Prize in Design, the BSA Women in Design Award, the Silicon Valley Visionary Award, and Carnegie’s Pride of America. In 2018 Oxman was honored with the National Design Award and the Design Innovation Medal.
Most recently, Oxman was the recipient of the Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Institute of British Architects (2019) and the Contemporary Vision Award by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019).