Operating at the intersection of technology and biology, designer Neri Oxman and her team are calling for a systemic change in the way we design the built environment, evolving from consuming Nature to augmenting her. Top-down form generation coupled with bottom-up growth of biological systems creates previously impossible opportunities for design that challenge how buildings and products are made and how they perform.
Examples include single material photosynthetic building façades that act, at once, as filter and barrier converting carbon into biofuel; wearable microbiomes that nourish our skin through selective filtration; and 3D-printed matter that repairs damaged tissue.