Jenny Hu — Looking Outwards 02

The Silk Pavillion is a pavilion designed and produced by the Mediated Matter lab at MIT’s Media Lab. I’m overall extremely inspired by the project because it represents Neri Oxman’s “material ecology” philosophy so clearly. What if the things we had today could be co-produced by understanding and putting material properties first?

The project is inspired by the way silkworms can produce their own cacoon out of a single thread of silk. The pavilion algorithm is generated by adopting similar behaviors to produce the panels of the pavilion out of thread, while the silkworms (which are acting completely autonomous) provide secondary structural support. It’s interesting because not only is the manufacturing algorithm based on natural logic, but the silk worms are in some ways autonomous generative beings too.

More information about the project can be found at the Mediated Matter Lab.