Neri Oxman

Oxman was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1976 and studied architecture at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture.⁠[1]

Both of her parents were architecture professors. After high school she served in the Israel Defense Forces as a member of the Israeli Air Force, and later studied medicine at Hadassah Medical School before turning to architecture.⁠[2]

She held the rank of first lieutenant in the Israeli Air Force.⁠[3]

In 2005 she came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a PhD student.⁠[4]

Before MIT she earned a diploma from the Architectural Association (RIBA 2 with Distinction) and had studied at the Technion and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; at MIT she pursued a PhD in design computation as a Presidential Fellow.⁠[5]

Her MIT Media Lab biography lists the Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award, the International Earth Awards and the HOLCIM Next Generation Award in 2008, and the METROPOLIS Next Generation Award in 2009.⁠[5]

In 2010 she founded The Mediated Matter Group at MIT, where she pioneered the field she calls Material Ecology, combining technology and biology to produce designs aligned with principles of ecological sustainability.⁠[6]

In 2013 the Mediated Matter team she headed built the Silk Pavilion at the MIT Media Lab: a robot laid threads over a metal scaffold to form a base, and 6,500 silkworms were then released onto the dome, where their spinning covered the structure.⁠[7]

Oxman said the project speculated about a future biological swarm approach to 3D printing, in which thousands of synthetic silkworms guided by environmental conditions such as light or heat would deposit natural materials, eliminating waste and increasing control over material location, structure and properties.⁠[8]

In January 2014 the Vilcek Foundation announced that the 2014 Vilcek Prize for Design would go to the Israeli-born Oxman for her digitally fabricated materials inspired by nature; the prizes honor immigrants with groundbreaking contributions in the United States. She was then Sony Corporation Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT.⁠[9]

On March 19, 2015, she gave the talk “Design at the intersection of technology and biology” at TED2015, presenting her lab’s research into how digital fabrication technologies can interact with the biological world.⁠[10]

In August 2015 Oxman and the Mediated Matter team unveiled a technique for 3D-printing molten glass, allowing transparent glass objects to be printed for the first time, and used it to produce a series of vases and bowls.⁠[11]

She said the technology could eventually be used at architectural scale, for example in building facades optimized for solar gain.⁠[11]

In 2017 she became a tenured professor at MIT.⁠[6]

In May 2018 Oxman, then an associate professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab, received the Interaction Design award in the 2018 National Design Awards of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, one of that year’s 10 honorees.⁠[12]

The Mediated Matter Group she headed won design project of the year at the Dezeen Awards 2019 with Aguahoja I, a digitally designed, robotically fabricated structure made from materials derived from apples, trees, insect exoskeletons and bones.⁠[13]

In 2019 she came under scrutiny when it emerged that her Mediated Matter group at MIT had received a $125,000 donation tied to Jeffrey Epstein four years earlier. She said that was the only time she met Epstein, that Media Lab director Joi Ito had assured her Epstein was an approved donor, and that she regretted receiving the funds and apologized to her students.⁠[14]

She was previously married to the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov; in January 2019 she married the investor Bill AckmanBill AckmanBill Ackman is an investment manager and the founder and CEO of Pershing Square; he is also executive chairman of Howard Hughes Holdings and a co-trustee of the Pershing Square Foundation. His career spans Gotham Partners, shareholder activism at public companies, closed-end funds and permanent capital vehicles, and philanthropic funding in education, health care, and scientific research.Open the full entry.⁠[14]

She left MIT in 2020 and created her own company, OXMAN, to advance innovation in product, architectural and urban design.⁠[3]

On February 22, 2020, The Museum of Modern Art in New York opened the monographic exhibition “Neri Oxman: Material Ecology,” showing seven major projects from her 20-year career; it was organized by Paola Antonelli and Anna Burckhardt.⁠[15]

The centerpiece was Silk Pavilion II, commissioned for MoMA; other works included Aguahoja (2018), Glass I and II (2015 and 2017) and Totems (2019), which centers on synthesized melanin.⁠[15]

Silk Pavilion II stands 9.5 meters tall, a stainless steel frame with knitting across it that 17,000 silkworms covered inside and out with silk. Oxman said it showed silk goods could be produced without boiling larvae alive in their cocoons.⁠[1]

MoMA later extended the exhibition’s run to October 18, 2020.⁠[16]

From February 19 to May 15, 2022, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented “Nature × Humanity: Oxman Architects,” nearly 40 works and installations spanning her career since 2007, including the Gemini Cinema and Biodiversity Pavilion models, the Aguahoja pavilions, the Vespers masks and the urban-planning project The Future of Mannahatta.⁠[17]

On September 1, 2023, she appeared as the guest of episode #394 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, introduced as working at OXMAN; topics included biomass versus anthropomass, computational templates, engineering with bacteria, plant communication, beauty, faith, extinction and alien life.⁠[18]

In early January 2024, Business InsiderBusiness InsiderBusiness Insider is a digital business-news organization.Open the full entry published an article alleging that three paragraphs of her 330-page 2010 dissertation, “Material-based Design Computation,” quoted other scholars without quotation marks and that a fourth paraphrased without citation.⁠[19]

Ackman had publicly called for the removal of HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry president Claudine Gay, in part over plagiarism allegations; Gay resigned that week.⁠[3]

Oxman promptly responded on X that she had credited the original authors at the end of each of the four paragraphs and in the bibliography but had not used quotation marks: “I regret and apologize for these errors.” She also said she had too little time to review the sources.⁠[19]

Business Insider then published a further article alleging that at least 15 passages in the dissertation were copied from WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, multilingual online encyclopedia launched on January 15, 2001, written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and hosted by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation; it is one of the most visited websites in the world.Open the full entry without citation. Ackman said they had been given insufficient time to research the claims and announced plagiarism checks on MIT’s president, faculty and board members; an MIT spokeswoman responded that the school’s leaders remained focused on ensuring its vital work continued.⁠[20]

On September 30, 2024, Oxman unveiled the OXMAN studio designed with Foster + Partners on the 9th and 10th floors of a Midtown Manhattan building originally designed by Albert Kahn as a car factory. She said the studio works in three main areas: urban design and architecture, product design, and molecular biology.⁠[21]

Foster + Partners said the 36,000-square-foot lab spans two levels and includes a digital fabrication and robotics workshop, a Biosafety Level 2 wet lab with four data-driven grow rooms, an architectural studio, a library and an exhibition gallery.⁠[22]

On October 31, 2024, OXMAN unveiled O°, a biomaterial, digital and robotic technology platform whose first product is a shoe made entirely of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs); the company said it is 100% biodegradable, uses no petrochemicals or glues and produces no microplastics, and that it was opening talks with potential partners, investors and brands to scale production.⁠[23]

As of January 2025 OXMAN had a few dozen employees; Ackman said his and Oxman’s investment in the studio had been around $100 million, and the two were its sole investors. The studio’s one public client at the time was the Australia-based developer Goodman GroupGoodman GroupGoodman Group is an industrial property and data centre group headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Made up of three stapled entities, Goodman Limited, Goodman Industrial Trust, and Goodman Logistics (HK) Limited, it is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under the code GMG and owns, develops, and manages logistics properties and data centres in major cities worldwide. It traces its origins to an industrial property trust formed by Greg Goodman in 1989 and had a total portfolio of A$89.0 billion as of June 30, 2026; in September 2026 it withdrew its development application for the Project Mars data centre in Lane Cove, Sydney.Open the full entry.⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/nerioxman (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Official website: https://www.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

OXMAN: Official website: https://oxman.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[18]