By Julia Ferrante
Neri Oxman displayed an unusual set of images: the well-magnified internal membrane of an eggshell, a three-dimensional magnolia cone and a budding plant.
"This represents all that I am fascinated with in nature," the award-winning architect and designer told the audience at Bucknell University's Trout Auditorium Tuesday night. "Every human and natural form of life on earth has gradients. Any living thing responds to life in motion. ... I am bringing that code and gradient into architecture."
The founder of an emerging field known as "material ecology," Oxman uses these principles of nature to conceive and design "living, breathing" structures that respond to their environment rather than compete with it. She spoke as part of the ongoing Bucknell Forum series, "Creativity: Beyond the Box," which features individuals from a wide range of fields who not only exemplify creativity as practitioners but who also can provide thoughtful and insightful commentary or interactive experiences on new ways of being creative.
...
Rather than choosing a form and manipulating materials to create structures and buildings, architects and designers should look to nature and mimic the structures of such high-functioning objects as an eggshell or a magnolia cone, Oxman told the crowd at Bucknell. Plants, too, are wired to evolve as they grow, she noted. So objects, including furniture and buildings, should be able to do the same.
"When a (magnolia) cone is introduced to high temperatures and moisture, it acts as a seed-dispenser mechanism," Oxman said. "How do we extract these principles from nature and import them in the natural world? Architects and designers usually work from a global form down from the top. Creativity is about being able to think beyond the type of media you are working with."
Oxman argued that architecture is in a "crisis of form," in which form is winning over function. READ MORE >>
via www.bucknell.edu