Wind Screen

Wind Screen
By Meejin Yoon, Associate Professor of Architecture
April – May, 2011
Green Building 54

Imagine a shimmering curtain of light suspended in the archway below the Green Building: an architectural-scale screen of micro-turbines that simultaneously generates and consumes energy harvested from the wind, translating wind speed into a visual register of this replenishable source of energy.  Air currents sweeping across the plaza create kinetic patterns of form and light, illuminating what otherwise would be a largely invisible phenomenon.  As the wind blows stronger, and the turbines spin faster, the lights shine more brightly; energy is consumed as soon as it is produced, always balancing the equation.

 

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J. MEEJIN YOON

J. Meejin Yoon is Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT, teaching the architecture design studios. Her design research investigates the relationship between form and performance, public space and technology, and interactivity and architecture. As the founder of MY Studio and co-founder of Howeler + Yoon Architecture, she is engaged in a multidisciplinary practice, operating in the space between architecture, art, and landscape. Her projects include architecture, urban design, installations, concept clothing and artist books. Among her more prominent design projects are: White Noise White Light (an interactive public space installation for the Athens 2004 Olympics), the 3 Degrees of Felt (for the Aztec Empire Exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum), and Hover (a solar-powered canopy in New Orleans). Her designs have been exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum, the Somerset House in London, and Tokyo’s National Art Center. Her many design awards include Architecture Record Design Vanguard, and the Rome Prize.