coming full circle
One of the most wonderful things about being a part of the “Smart Home: Green + Wired” project is actually getting to work with the Museum of Science and Technology. This museum is so near and dear to my heart because it was such a significant part of my childhood. One day while I was in middle school, my entire 8th grade class of 300 kids piled into a caravan of buses and drove from Iowa to Chicago just to visit this museum. My classmates and I spent the entire day going through fascinating exhibits on things like coal mines, railroads, and an actual reproduction of an old-timey “Main Street”.
I was also really interested in the building itself. The building was the only in-place surviving building from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. I walked through the Beaux Arts building amazed and inspired (you just didn’t get to see buildings like this one in Iowa at that time!). The mixture of the grand architecture and the science was intoxicating. After that visit, I signed up for as many architecture and science classes as I could for the following semester. Based on our work at MKD, you can see that the mixture of these two interests has clearly persisted in me!
These photographs do great job of showing the side module in production. The ceiling is actually fabricated on a jig from the top. This way the typical messy, awkward drywall hanging from below is eliminated. The framing for the entire house happened within a week. Pretty exciting!
Photos from All-American Homes
Today we met to finalize the location of the home automation connections for the project. I met with Scott Landry, MKD’s Director of Architecture, J Jeffery Johnson, the exhibit’s Project Manager at MSI, James Kean of MKD (a fellow Iowan and Museum of Science and Industry fan!), and Chris Winters, also of MKD. We will now be sending these rough locations to the museum for coordination with the smart technology consultant and with WIRED magazine.
During our meeting, I was reminded of the Museum’s mission statement:
“The Museum of Science and Industry’s mission is to inspire the inventive genius in everyone. We inspire by making our exhibits, collections, and content accessible to all of our audiences through informal, hands-on experiences. Why inspire? We can only guess how many youngsters decided to become biologists or doctors, geneticists or chemists or rocket scientists, right here.”
As I read this statement, I think they should add “architect” to their list, as well.
Make take-out nights a waste-free event by asking restaurants to hold the plastic utensils and condiment packets...
