As a participant of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Neri Oxman gives us a glimpse at a bright and interesting future.
The world should be seen as a organism rather than a machine. The Fourth Industrial Revolution brings us back to a more substantial way of looking at mother nature.
„grow rather than assemble“
In her article for the World Economic Forum Professor Oxman talks about a future where the World-as-Organism supersedes the World-as-Machine.
The Digital Age brought us a lot of possibilities in manufacturing and mass production. Products and parts out of single materials dominate our time. But novel technologies are enabling the leap to the Fourth Industrial Revolution – the Biological Age.
Microorganisms can now be designed to mimic ‘factories’ transforming almost any biomass into bio-products that are useful for, by example, wearable garments, construction materials, and transportation. E.coli, a bacterium that lives in the gut, can be transformed into edible sugar; grass converted into diesel; corn transfigured into plastic. In this age of biological alchemy, information architectures and manufacturing practices—operating in high spatial and temporal resolution—unite to grow rather than assemble.
She further predicts a Material Ecology – Where we rather grow materials than produce them; for example wearables that serve more than one purpose. Neri Oxman presented a 3D Printed Photosynthetic Wearable in collaboration with Stratasys. She predicts more projects like this.
In the Biological Age, designers and builders are empowered to dream up new, dynamic design possibilities, where products and structures will be able to grow, heal, and adapt.
More about the projects of Neri Oxman. You can also find a link to the complete article of Neri Oxman below.
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