Neri Oxman Quotes

Design must be an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the needs of men. It must be more research-oriented, and we must stop defiling the earth itself with poorly-designed objects and structures.

Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.

Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill.

Design needs a new relationship with the world, one that is more focused on our planet's needs.

Design shouldn't have to take a backseat to sustainability and making things responsibly.

In the end, it's clear that the incorporation of synthetic biology in product and architectural design will enable the transition from designs that are inspired by nature to designs made with and by nature to, possibly, designing nature herself.

Mediocre design provably wastes the world's resources, corrupts the environment, affects international competitiveness. Design is important.

One of the stated goals of the postmodern movement in architecture was a greater sensitivity to the people who live in or use newly designed buildings.

As an architect, you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.

A lot of designers still have nostalgia for the past. As for the furniture in the future, I hope they use less of real wood. Conservation in wood is necessary.

Sustainability can't be like some sort of a moral sacrifice or political dilemma or a philanthropical cause. It has to be a design challenge.

The future of architecture is culture.

Per capita, I would say that Australia has more biomimetic projects going than many other countries I've been to.

We need to be both conscious and competent to design products that emulate nature's life cycles, making sure that they endure and are either recycled or absorbed.

For businesses, biomimicry is about bringing a new discipline - biology - to the design table. It's not to write an environmental impact statement, as most biologists in business do right now.

I think taking design out of the studio and really having a relationship with the people that you're making it for really convinced me of how powerful a thing design is. It's not just an aesthetic decoration.

My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we - architects - can effect the quality of life of the people.

Design our world so that we have positive social and environmental side effects.

I am passionate about what design can do - how far it can support the new ideas and the new ways of living of this 21st Century. Good design accelerates this exciting future where manufacturing is local, materials and processes are cradle to cradle, business models are both socially and financially driven.

The X is an amazing car, but we kind of got carried away with the art and technology. Obviously, you want great art. You want great technology. But we did get a little distracted from our mission, which was to advance the cause of electric vehicles. And it probably delayed us a little bit with the Model 3 as well.

My job at the end of the day is to design timeless, desirable, beautiful products. It's not about just designing a bunch of organic jumpers. I have a balance within the brand. If you try to create something people enjoy, and it happens to be made in a responsible way, then that's when you can really strike an incredible balance.

I think architects have a major role in being responsible for illustrating what the future could be. Because of the very strong political and commercial climate, many architects are trying very hard to solve everyday issues, to respond to the authorities.

If a technology is elegant, biodegradable, made from renewable materials and employs a minimum of muscular, water or wind energy, is responsive, beautiful in its way, and challenging to the user in that it develops the user's senses and strength - it may comport with nature.

Jay Harman is the quintessential biomimic, a principled inventor who sees solutions everywhere he looks in the natural world. And he looks deeply, with the soul of a student. He moves with grace from a world of waving sea kelp to the world of sustainable design, bringing nature's wisdom into the board rooms of global companies, to the design tables of the engineers and designers who make our world. This is more than a business book, more than a memoir, more than a new way to solve global challenges. It's a book about a new way to think.

If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.