The objective of this project is the design of the first Exhibition on Light-Interacting Technologies for Architectural Envelopes. We aim to propose an effective, informative and interactive experience that increases the awareness and understanding of designers and the general public about advanced façade strategies. This exhibition will focus on revealing their performance while emphasizing their key role in integrating sustainability in architecture. It will use tactic installations of these materials and assemblies to get architects to explore the fascinating spatial design opportunities enabled by their capabilities to control daylight and solar radiation.

The protagonists of the exhibition are the materials themselves. Our main objective is to design an environment in which a ‘mise-en-scene’ of a selection of state-of-the-art daylighting technologies will allow visitors to experience the qualities of a space endowed with these materials’ attributes. Towards this end, we intend to incorporate the dynamic nature of sunlight and reveal a variety of ways in which these materials perform, by subjecting them to different stimuli. In that scenario, the light-control systems will generate a skin that will enclose a sequence of spaces configuring a logistic itinerary where visitors will be able to perceive a tactic contrast of concepts.

In order to generate an experience with a strong didactic component, this itinerary will have a double reading according to two physical ways of touring the same space: one perceptive and another descriptive. Through the first route, visitors will receive the materials performance in the space without ‘seeing’ the actual materials performing, only feeling the qualitative effects of the changing light in the space. A second exploration of the circuit will get visitors to see the protagonists working, which will allow them to identify specific experienced environments with particular technical installations.

Accompanying this sensory showroom, the exposition will include the display of graphical information about the basics of daylighting design and representative architectural case studies. This information will be transmitted by different means of representation: interactive digital media, physical models, and printed catalogue. To reinforce its educational impact students’ work will be showcased. The exhibition presents an opportunity to use a real space as a case study and a laboratory for new applications of these materials. We believe that to promote the engagement of architects in daylighting we must start within schools of design, and we think that the opportunity to participate in this exhibition is a great incentive to students. Students will be asked to design and build unconventional ways to express the dynamics of daylight and its interaction with advanced façades, with specific format constraints.

Outside In/Inside Out will be presented in the MIT Museum’s main gallery and on its facade for 6 months beginning in April 2010, and will tour nationally and internationally thereafter.

A paper on Outside In/Inside Out concept and development will be presented at the Lux Europa 2009 conference, which will take place from 9-11 September 2009 in Istanbul, and whose main theme is Lighting and the Environment.