MATERIALECOLOGY: Neri Oxman: Media Lab Materials Research Group

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Media Lab Materials Research Group

Responsive Materials is an umbrella project directed by Pattie Maes, Marcelo Coelho, Sajid Sadi and Neri Oxman. It encompasses a variety of novel materials and fabrication technologies, which can operate in unison to bring to fruition objects and spaces that realize truly omnipresent interactivity. We are developing interactive textiles, ubiquitous displays, and responsive spaces that seamlessly couple input, output, processing, communication, and power distribution, while extending invisibly across different scales of function and context. Augmented Pillows, Flexible Urban Displays, Shutters, Sprout I/O, and Pulp-Based Computing are current instantiations of these technologies.

Link to the Online Description @ MIT Media Lab

materialecology

materialecology was formed in 2006 by Neri Oxman as an interdisciplinary research initiative that undertakes design research in the intersection between architecture, engineering, computation, and ecology. As such, this initiative is concerned with material organization and performance across all scales of design thought and practice. As such, it seeks to promote and define a design research agenda which is ecological in nature, in ideology and in material practice; it aims at embracing the evolving elements of change in both (and indeed related) social constructs and environmental descriptions of the ever changing built environment. materialecology undertakes research in advanced digital applications for architectural practice and pursuits their contribution to a design paradigm promoting generative design processes.