Neri Oxman’s Man-Nahata: Looking Outwards-03

Neri Oxman has been a huge inspiration to me since I saw her featured on Netflix’s Abstract series. The concept of biomimicry (which is honestly more of a return to what was than a new concept) holds incredibly poignant as human innovation seems to split the sides of the uncanny valley and either try with incredible effort to mimic analog, natural, or otherwise older design ideas, or shoot beyond anything that has ever been imagined. Oxman’s most recent published project is entitled ‘Man-Nahata,’ the Native American word for the island of Manhattan. It imagines, if Manhattan were to undergo an collision wiping out its population, what the biological regrowth might look like, using ecological data from the island pre-colonization and also the current grid layout and zoning of the city. How might nature rebuild, and how might we rebuild around her? Generative algorithms imagine and plot how nature might overtake the current architecture, and how our city planning could influence a natural process.