2025 Portman Symposium: The Science of Light
We turn to Ernst Cassirer’s persuasive argument, “side by side with logical or scientific language, there is a language of poetic imagination.” This studio leans into this assertion. An appreciation of the poetics of light comes from a deep examination of the science behind it. The science of light is the precise study and understanding of the movement of the sun in the sky. The earth’s axis of orientation towards the sun as well as its cyclic movement around it are what animate our experience of it.
These truths make it both a temporal and a spatial phenomenon. Its presence changes as much from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, season to season as it does from one place to another. When speaking of natural light in a scientific sense, we talk of time of day and month, solstice and equinox as well as characteristics of the sun’s path in the sky like azimuth and altitude and climate to fully understand the lighting conditions and the atmosphere of a particular place.
With this deep understanding of the science of light we have a foundation from which we can frame the design process. Architecture is a technology that we can tune so that the space can resonate more precisely with our bodies’ circadian rhythms and the natural world around us.
Symposium Panel
Parking for the Symposium
We recommend parking at the Student Center Parking Deck: Visitor Area 3, 355 Ferst Dr NW, Atlanta, GA 30332
Enter the parking deck from the entrance on Ferst Dr. After parking, exit towards the John Lewis Student Center. Walk through the entrance that faces the parking lot, take the stairs down to the first floor and walk towards Tech Green. Turn left before the Price Gilbert Memorial Library and walk towards the large white Koan sculpture (bordered in green on the map). Pass the sculpture and take a right to approach the East Architecture building. Walk towards the open breezeway and enter the doors to your right to find the auditorium (entrance seen in photo with red border).
Transit for the Symposium
We recommend using the North Ave MARTA Station: 713 W Peachtree St NW, Atlanta, GA 30308
Upon arrival to the station, take the stairs or the escalator to the exit facing North Ave. From here, take a right and begin walking towards the Georgia Tech campus, crossing the bridge over I-85. After crossing the bridge, walk one more block until you arrive at Techwood Dr NW. Take a right here, and walk one block towards Bobby Dodd Way NW. Once you get to this street, take a left and begin walking towards the library. Once you arrive at the Media Bridge (pictured with the purple border), take the stairs down and follow the path to the East and West Architecture buildings. Take a right and enter the breezeway of the East Architecture building, then enter the doors on the right. From here, you can enter the auditorium with an immediate left.