Neri Oxman with a model of a molded chaise lounge. (Photo courtesy MIT)

Bones, computers and art: Neri Oxman, MIT researcher, artist and medical scholar, has created yet another prolific project of genius in the form of… a chaise lounge?

Yep.

Looking a little bit like a bio-mechanoid piece from H.R. Giger – the artist behind the Alien movies – the chair’s design, she says, “drew inspiration from the internal structure of bones and other biological forms,” according to MIT’s Tech Talk.

Her work aims to use computational tools to produce “performance-based design,” she says, in which, as occurs in nature, “the organization of the structure is directly linked to the forces that are applied to that structure.” To achieve that, she studies natural materials like the cellular structure of a bone, or microscopic images of a butterfly wing, and translates those principles into construction that takes advantage of the flexibility of modern materials and processes. “It’s about process, not product,” she says.

For more of Oxman’s work, you can follow her blog: Materialecology.