pink LMAOnade

April 27 – July 30, 2010

Wolk Gallery, MIT School of Architecture + Planning

Building 7-338

Opening Reception

April 27, 5:30 - 7:00 pm, Wolk Gallery

Opening Talks

April 27, 7:00 pm, Building 3-133

Professor Marilyne Andersen and Davidson Norris, Principal of Carpenter/Norris Consulting, New York

Daylighting is inherent in architectural design and is one of the main drivers of a building’s technical performance and its resulting human comfort and health. Students in the Fall 2009 Daylighting class taught by Marilyne Andersen, Associate Professor of Building Technology in the MIT Department of Architecture, worked in inter-disciplinary teams to analyze designated portions of the second floor extension to The Consulate of Switzerland/swissnex Boston building in Cambridge MA.

With the aim of developing integrated solutions for façades on every side of the building, they focused on issues of glare, illumination, overheating, the ensuing energy requirements and the visual interest of the spaces.

The exhibition features models, data analyses, simulations, video and audio that offer a broad range of creative solutions to a multi-faceted problem, and illustrate how challenging and inspiring it can be to answer a seemingly simple question,“What is good daylighting?”

Delight in Greener Daylight is sponsored by The Consulate of Switzerland/swissnex Boston

Every time I go into a bookstore, I usually wander around the fine art and philosophy sections (I prefer nonfiction), waiting for a book to jump out at me and grab my attention. I’m looking for the holy grail - the one book that will dive off the shelf, smacking me in the face, saying “Me! Read me! I hold all the answers!” There are one or two that have come close - when you start reading and you’re hooked, and you feel like the author is speaking to your life experience so directly that you come to really know them… and they change you.

Well I was looking for more than even that. I wanted the mother of all books. One that will tell me exactly what to do, how to do it, etc etc for my life to feel fulfilled and creative and happy. Blah blah (don’t worry, by now you’re feeling like I’m going to start talking about Jesus and you’re right - I just did. But now I’m done). I picked up a book and flipped through it, scanned the back… looked pretty good. But I wanted more. The perfect book must be here, I just needed a few more minutes.

I was on a schedule, checking the time on my phone every minute or so to make sure I wouldn’t miss the train. I kept thinking, oh just one more minute and I’ll find it. I wanted it to be the right book. I had three minutes left. I started scanning even quicker, as if I would see a beam of freaking light creep out from under a dusty stack, turning my portentous search into a thing of destiny.

Well, there was no light. No heavenly choir. No grail. Not even a hobo’s Dunks cup. There was just the book in my hand that I hoped would be sufficient for the ride home, and a realization that this whole ordeal is a microcosm of my life. That there has to be something better, something perfect, contained in this one thing that I was searching for. This perfect, right book specifically tailored to me - It may as well have been the “perfect job” or the “perfect grad school.” Shit.

I don’t consider myself to be a severe perfectionist, and I like to think that I’m pretty intuitive and self-aware…but shit like this creeps up on you.

Once I realized what I was doing, I turned around, bought the random book I had in my hand, and left promptly, shaking my head at myself. It’s very mid-20’s of me to agonize over the rest of my life, but it’s still ridiculous. The funniest part about it is that the book I left with, the one I didn’t feel sure about and thought would be another “meh” purchase that sits on my nightstand, half-read… It ended up being the perfect book.