Mediated Matter: Neri Oxman’s Vision for a New Biological Age

Discover Mediated Matter: Design and Invention in the New Biological Age, the first comprehensive monograph by Neri Oxman. Featuring two decades of groundbreaking projects at the crossroads of design, science, and nature, this visionary book arrives November 18, 2025. 

Design at its best asks us to rethink our relationship with the world around us. Few voices embody that challenge more fully than Neri Oxman, the pioneering designer and researcher whose first comprehensive monograph, Mediated Matter: Design and Invention in the New Biological Age, arrives on November 18, 2025.

The book is a landmark with over 1,200 images, unpublished sketches, lab notes, and essays that capture two decades of Oxman’s work leading The Mediated Matter Group at the MIT Media Lab. For those who’ve followed her journey, this is the first time her groundbreaking philosophy of “Material Ecology” has been gathered in one place.

Nature, Technology, and the Future of Design

Oxman’s work asks a bold question: what if design didn’t fight against nature but collaborated with it? Her research shows what happens when biology, computation, and fabrication intertwine. Think of a pavilion spun by thousands of silkworms (Silk Pavilion), glass 3D-printed into luminous new forms (Glass), bio-plastics made from apple skins and shrimp shells (Aguahoja), and even an experimental habitat for bees (Synthetic Apiary).

The result is not just futuristic design, but a philosophy that reframes the discipline itself. It proposes that every stage of making, from conception to end-of-life, belongs within nature’s cycles.

About Neri Oxman

Neri Oxman is an award-winning designer, architect, and inventor whose work sits at the intersection of design, biology, computing, and materials science. She is best known for pioneering Material Ecology, a discipline that considers nature’s processes as integral to design, from sourcing to fabrication to decomposition.

As the founder of The Mediated Matter Group at the MIT Media Lab, Oxman led research that produced some of the most influential and provocative projects in contemporary design. Her work has been exhibited at the MoMA, the Smithsonian, the Pompidou, and the Design Museum in London, cementing her status as one of the most visionary voices shaping the future of design.

Pre-order Mediated Matter: Design and Invention in the New Biological Age — available in bookstores November 18, 2025. Pre-order here →