A biography for Neri Oxmanhasn’t been written yet.
“When I came to MIT, there were four rubrics: science, art, design, and technology. And as you entered your degree, whether it was a master's or a Ph.D., if you were a citizen in one domain, you were a traveler in the other.”
“We need to treat the planet as a system, and up until now, we've operated more as if the world were made of separate parts - this part is environment, this part is economy. But everything is connected. You can't fix global warming with a Ph.D. in thermodynamics!”
“I object to the hegemony of form in contemporary architecture. We have very advanced technological tools, but ultimately, we create buildings exactly like we used to before: We send the drawings to an engineer and let him struggle with figuring out how to build it.”
“All great cinema has the sense of the dynamic, the transitional, mixed with the mythical and the sense of ritual.”
“I am equally fascinated and awed by visiting an Alexander McQueen show as I am looking under a microscope.”
“Look at spiders. They use about eight different properties of silk for different functions. The spider is like a multimaterial 3D printer.”
“When you celebrate a new idea, it immediately comes through the way you hold yourself and the clothes you wear.”
“In traditional 3D printing, the gantry size poses an obvious limitation for the designer who wishes to print in larger scales and achieve structural and material complexity.”
“How can we reinterpret 3-D printing in a way that suggests a new design language?”
“Gender is more of a continuum than we are willing to admit when we hit the restroom.”
“Forms in nature are a byproduct of a reciprocal action between a given material and the conditions of the environment. But in architecture, the process is the direct opposite: First you decide on the form, and then you think how to build it in reality.”
“In nature, there is no separation between design, engineering, and fabrication; the bone does it all.”
“Choice is a form of compromise, no? So why choose if you can have both?”
“I am inspired by alchemy and all things continuous, uninterrupted, and effortlessly fused into wholes.”
“Although I often find that the feminist rhetoric - not feminism - can come across as simple-minded, self-regarding, nuance-averse and reductive - biology to physiology, history to psychology, procreation to gynecology, and so on - I have come to realize that we should all be feminists.”
“One cannot separate the spider web's form from the way in which it originated.”
“In the United States alone, 450 billion square feet of glass facade is produced every year. What if we could take this chance to use the glass to harness solar energy and allow the architecture to respond to the light and heat of the sun, to create photosynthesis and generate solar energy?”
“I like to mostly wear very simple clothes.”
“I grew up in a modernist house, in a modernist culture. There was a love for modernism everywhere - the furniture, the books, the food, even the cutlery. So I learned very early to appreciate the value of design and the value of architecture.”
“I approach the world as a whole by taking an integrative approach, not a world of parts, and I like to bring different fields and disciplines together. The same is true with my preoccupation with cultural expression.”