Neri Oxman to set up lab in New York office by Rafael Viñoly Architects

American-Israeli architect and designer Neri Oxman will open a laboratory at 787 11th Avenue, the 1920s New York building renovated by Rafael Viñoly Architects.

Developers Georgetown Company has announced that Neri Oxman will be one of two anchor tenants for the office project in Manhattan.

Oxman, the director of MIT Media Lab's Mediated Matter group, plans to use her new 36,000-square-foot laboratory to "research, design and implement inventions to address complex challenges across product, architectural, urban and planetary scales".

Top: 787 11th Avenue. Above: director of MIT Media Lab Neri Oxman. Photo courtesy of TED Talks

Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly has renovated the building on Manhattan's West Side, adding a glazed extension and a rooftop garden.

The two-storey glazed extension sits atop the eight-storey art deco-era building.

The other anchor tenant, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will build a healthcare facility in the building, which was constructed in 1927 by American architect Albert Kahn for the Packard Motor Company.

787 11th Avenue was built in 1927 by Albert Kahn

The medical school plans to use the 165,000-square-foot it is leasing to open research facilities studying genome sequencing and 3D organoid technology – where stem cells are grown in vitro to study how cells respond to disease.

Oxman's husband, billionaire investor Bill Ackman, bought 787 11th Avenue with Georgetown Company in 2015. Ackman already planned to relocate the offices of his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, to the site.

Rafael Viñoly Architects is adding a rooftop glass extension

Recent projects from MIT's Mediated Matter include a pavilion that was woven by thousands of silkworms, tubular structures built by swarms of tiny robots, and sculptures injected with melanin to explore the pigment's potential for architectural applications.

Mediated Matter's Aguahoja I, a robotically fabricated structure made from apples, bones and insect exoskeletons, won design project of the year at Dezeen Awards 2019.

Founded in 1983 and based in New York, Rafael Viñoly Architects other projects in Manhattan include the now-infamous supertall skyscraper 432 Park Avenue and an upscale residential tower overlooking the Hudson River.

Images courtesy of Rafael Viñoly Architects unless stated.

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