Spotlight on LIghtFair 2018: Keynote Neri Oxman of Sony Corporation and MIT Media Lab

February 1, 2018

Keynote Neri Oxman of Sony Corporation and MIT Media Lab is an award-winning designer whose work reveals a future with the intersection of technology and nature. LightFair takes place in Chicago May 6-10, 2018. The pre-conference LightFair Institute: May 6-7; the Trade show and conference: May 8-10).

During her May 7 keynote luncheon address “Innovation in Design,” attendees will discover the broad spectrum of Oxman’s forward-thinking work. The research her team conducts combines computational design, digital fabrication, materials science and synthetic biology. They use the knowledge in applications from micro scale to building scale.

Oxman states that her goal is to “enhance the relationship between the built and the natural environments by employing design principles inspired or engineered by Nature and implementing them in the invention of novel digital design technologies.” She received a PhD in design computation as a presidential fellow at MIT, where she coined the term “material ecology” to describe her research area. Material ecology considers form generation, manufacturing, the environment and the material itself as inseparable dimensions of design. In this approach, products and buildings are biologically informed and digitally engineered by, with and for, nature.

She was on ICON’s list of the top 20 most influential architects to shape our future and theFast Company list of the 100 most creative people. SEED magazine called her a “Revolutionary Mind,” and she was a part of Esquire’s Best and Brightest. She has received many awards including the 40 Under 40Building Design + Construction Award, Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award, International Earth Award for Future-Crucial Design andMETROPOLIS Next Generation Award. In 2014, Oxman won the Vilcek Prize in Design, Carnegie’s Pride of America Award and Boston Society of Architects Women in Design Award. Her work has been covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, Fast Company and The Boston Globe.

Find out more about LightFair: www.lightfair.com