OXMAN operates on three scales of design: product design, architectural design, and molecular design. The lab and the projects that it undertakes – currently focusing on fashion, architecture, and scent design — are intertwined such that inventions made in one domain inform innovations in another. The lab creates fully integrated systems that unify design, materials, production, and decomposition, to create positive impacts across the lifecycle of products and buildings.
"We are a design and innovation company that creates new technologies, products, and environments across a range of scales and applications, from the molecular to the urban scale," remarked Dr. Neri Oxman, Founder and CEO, OXMAN. "We advocate for synergy between biology and technology, moving towards products and buildings that are designed for the immediate and long-term well-being of human civilization and the natural world."
OXMAN, established in 2020, has recently completed the construction of the OXMAN lab, designed in collaboration with Foster + Partners; expanded the OXMAN team, and developed cutting-edge innovations and inventions. Led by Dr. Oxman, the OXMAN team includes architects and product designers, biomedical, mechanical, and textile engineers; molecular biologists, chemists, and materials scientists; data visualization specialists, computational and parametric designers, instrument makers, and other expert creators.
OXMAN's work challenges the status quo of product, architectural, and molecular design by creating products that can grow and decompose with beneficial properties for soil microbiomes, urban masterplans designed to rewild ecosystems, and molecular compounds that encode signals of biodiversity and resilience, respectively.
Overview video: https://youtu.be/O54zJTBMnP0
Embed code: <iframe width="560" height="315" src=" https://www.youtube.com/embed/O54zJTBMnP0?si=KKZ-LzlHi9v3o5-s" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
THREE PRACTICE AREAS
OXMAN's ethos is rooted in Material Ecology, a design approach developed by Dr. Oxman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006. The approach considers all aspects of design – from generative design through material sourcing and processing, digital fabrication, and construction, to end-of-life scenarios – as part of the natural ecology. OXMAN believes that manmade materials and constructs have a holistic relationship with the environment and should be designed to maximize their net positive contributions to it. The principles of Material Ecology aim to reduce the dimensional mismatch between things that are made and things that are grown; for example, by increasing the resolution of the design space to match that of biological systems, and/or by creating design systems that can adapt and respond to their environment in real-time.
OXMAN's long-term vision is to impart positive impact upon the natural environment through systems that unite top-down planning and engineering, with bottom-up emergence and growth. A summary of OXMAN's long-term goals, recent inventions and how they revolutionize current practice follows below.
Scale | OXMAN Goals | OXMAN Inventions | OXMAN Transformations |
Product | Design the lifecycle of consumer goods to borrow matter and energy from the natural environment and return them upon obsolescence. | A revolutionary class of biologically programmed, computationally grown, and robotically manufactured shoes and textiles that are 100% biocompatible and biodegradable, and made with no microplastics. | In place of assembling discrete parts, each with their own inert material and homogeneous properties, OXMAN cultivates biocompatible mono-materials characterized by highly tunable property gradients and multi-functionality. |
Architectural | Promote the biodiversity, resilience, and productivity of ecosystems for the mutual empowerment of humans and the environment. | A software environment that applies computational decision-making algorithms to master planning approaches that incorporate ecosystem engineering principles. | In contrast to 'net-zero' construction – which aims to minimize negative impact – OXMAN seeks to maximize ecological well-being through new forms of ecological construction. |
Molecular | Simulate, revive, restore, and rewild ancient and novel ecosystems, capturing molecular "signature compounds" of biodiverse, resilient, and productive environments. | Data-driven grow rooms (or "Capsules") that enable the revival and restoration of ancient and/or struggling ecosystems, including the creation of ancient smells that embody biodiverse and resilient environments. | Rather than producing and consuming monocultures, OXMAN pursues the study of ancient ecosystems – as well as the exploration of novel ones – that sustain diverse, internally regulated, and highly networked life-forms. |
PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS
OXMAN's current work includes three initiatives and platforms. Developed in complementarity, OXMAN's work propagates the company's foundational precept that the design of anything and everything need not be harmful to the environment and can indeed be designed to remediate, replenish, and even rewild existing ecosystems.
- Oo (pronounced "O-Zero") explores how designed objects can borrow – rather than consume – matter and energy from the natural world and return them upon obsolescence. It is driven by the belief that the lifecycles of consumer goods can be designed from end-to-end to embody the growth and decomposition of ecosystems.
By defaulting to over-engineered assemblies of diverse materials, each requiring different manufacturing and disposal processes, human-made products cause health and environmental harm while struggling to match the performance and sustainability of natural material systems. OXMAN is focused instead on creating consumer products made from one material class, using one machine, under one roof.
The Oo platform is a vertically integrated approach to biopolymer design, digital fabrication, and programmable decomposition. It removes the complexity involved in fabricating objects by tuning polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), a single, versatile material class known for its biodegradability in ambient conditions. PHAs are produced by bacteria fed on abundant natural resources such as atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and food waste. OXMAN's compact robotic system 3D prints custom PHA blends onto a textile that is 3D knitted from a PHA-based yarn produced through a process of extrusion and melt spinning. Interlacing fibers to create shape and movement eliminates the cut-and-sew and adhesion processes associated with traditional assembly lines. As a result, the Oo knitting technology approaches a zero-waste process.
Oo knitting technology first appears in a collection of fully biodegradable shoes made entirely from PHAs. It embodies the versatility of PHAs by incorporating them as knitted textiles and 3D printed elements in precise designs informed by the kinetics of human motion. The heart of each shoe is a unifying base layer of a knitted sock. Given the shoe's intent (e.g., ballet slipper, shoe, clog), outer layers are printed on the knitted textile to provide specific functionalities such as reinforcement, cushioning, strength, and pliability. The versatility and automation built into the O <
