08.06.2011                      6.Siwan, 5771                      Schawuot 1

Feature:

'Nature is a brilliant engineer'

In her cutting-edge research at MIT, Israeli-born architect Neri Oxman aims to apply naturally occurring physical processes to the design of objects and buildings.

On Neri Oxman's desk in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – a place where the future of the world of design, technology and multimedia is being written – is an array of delicate butterfly wings, wasp nests, a sizable pinecone collection and an assortment of human bones.
Haifa-born Oxman, 35, one of the world's leading researchers in the field of digital architecture, is currently studying how our bones are affected by environmental conditions and by the weight that is brought to bear on them, and how such knowledge can be applied in other areas of life. It is known, for instance, that astronauts in outer space lose bone mass because of the absence of gravity, whereas women when they are pregnant develop stronger bones in order to withstand the added load….