PeristalCity: A Circulatory Habitat Cluster for Manhattan

Neri Oxman is a Design-Technology Research Consultant for KPF Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (NY & London) and is currently working towards her Ph.D. in Design and Computation at MIT. Neri studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London (with distinction), the Technion Israel Institute of Technology (with honors), and the Hebrew University Medical School. She has practiced Architecture with Ram Karmi, OCEAN NORTH and Kohn Pederson Fox. Recent exhibitions of OCEAN NORTH, in which Neri was a participant, include the Venice Architectural Biennale (2002, 2004) and the Beijing Biennale (2004). Neri has taught design and computation workshops at the Emergent Technologies and Design Master's Program at the AA, the IT-Master's Program at the Oslo School of Architecture, as well as at Rice and Columbia Universities. She has collaborated with Bentley Systems and the Smart Geometry Group and has given numerous workshops on Generative Components and other parametric software packages at various institutions including TU Delft, TU Vienna, Cambridge U.K. MIT and Columbia University. Her work has been published in journals, magazines and books including AD, Icon. AA Files, Building Design (BD Magazine), Demonstrating Digital Architecture (Birkhauser Publishers) and Archiprix International 2005 (010 Publishers). In 2005. she was the recipient of the FEIDAD Design Merit Award, Archiprix Award, and the America- Israel Cultural Foundation Award of Excellence.

Mitchell Joachim is a Ph. D. candidate at the Department of Architecture's Computation Group at MIT. His dissertation is entitled: "Ecotransology: Integrated Designs for Urban Mobility." Prior to MIT, he completed two master's degrees from Harvard University (MAUD) and Columbia University (M.Arch). Currently he is a researcher at the Media Lab Smart Cities Group, collaborating with his advisor William J. Mitchell on the General Motors/ Frank O. Gehry Concept Car. In parallel with Gehry Partners in Los Angles, he actively worked as an architect on the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards Project. During his time in Cambridge, he has been a Moshe Safdie and Associates research fellow, award winner and a Martin Family Society Fellow for Sustainability. He has also worked as an architect at Pei, Cobb, Freed and Partners, and the Michael Sorkin Studio in New York City. Mitchell has served as visiting faculty in sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work is published in "How Harvard would remake Atlanta," (Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 2001), Michael Sorkin Studio: Wiggle (Monacelli Press, 1998), and "The Guru of Impossible Engineering Creates a Car," (Popular Science. 2004). His winning design of living structures—Fab Tree Hab—with Habitat for Humanity and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art has been honored with a nomination for the INDEX Award and exhibited internationally.