Neri Oxman

The sericin is sort of the glue of the cocoon.

The fibrin is the fiber-based material of the cocoon.

And through fibers and glue—and that's true for so many systems in nature, lots of fiber and glue—

And that architecture allows them to metamorphosize.

And in the process, they vary the properties of that silk thread.

So it's stiffer or softer depending on where it is in the section of the cocoon.

And so we were trying to emulate this robotically with a 3D printer that was a six-axis KUKA arm, one of these robots.

baby kookas.

And we're trying to emulate that process computationally and build something very large.

When one of my students now, a brilliant industrial engineer roboticist on my team, Marcus, said, well, you know, we were just playing with those silkworms and enjoying their presence when we realized that if they're placed on a desk or

or a horizontal surface, they will go about creating their cocoon.

Only the cocoon would be flat because they're constantly looking for a vertical post in order to use that post as an anchor to spin the cocoon.

But in the absence of that post, on surfaces that are less than 21 millimeters and flat, they will spin flat patches.

And we say, aha.

Let's work with them to produce this dome as a set of flat patches.

And a silkworm, mind you, is quite an egocentric creature.

And actually, the furthest you go, you move forward in evolution by natural selection, the more egoism you find in creatures.

So when you think about termites, right, their material sophistication is...

is actually very primitive, but they have incredible ability to communicate and connect with each other.

So if you think about the entire, all of nature, let's say all of living systems as like a matrix that runs across two axes, one is material sophistication, which is terribly irrelevant for designers, and the other is communication.