December 2017 Update

Dear Friends of the MIT Glass Lab,

Happy Holidays! As we approach the end of the year, we are also nearing the end of our third year in the renovated and expanded Glass Lab. It’s hard to believe three years have gone by so fast! As a friend of our program, I thought you might enjoy an update on the some of the work that this beautiful new facility has enabled our students and instructors to do.

Our first year was a whirlwind of getting used to teaching more students, organizing the new space, and working out kinks in some of our new modern systems. We went almost instantly from teaching around 30 students per semester before the renovation, to teaching more than 50 per semester. Since then, we have trained additional volunteer staff to accommodate our larger student population, and added some new features to the program.

CLASSES: 20 years ago there were no intermediate or advanced classes in the Glass Lab – only classes for beginners. Today, in addition to 4 classes for beginning students, we have 4 intermediate classes at various levels from near-beginner to advanced, so there are now many more ways for students to stay involved and develop creative skills. Expanding our intermediate class offerings has also enabled us to develop a larger pool from which to recruit instructors, and has increased continuity in senior instruction. Our volunteer instructor staff has grown from 12 to 20 in the last few years. Many of our senior instructors are alumni who live in the Boston area and want to stay connected to MIT and the Glass Lab.

WORKSHOPS: With the expansion of our footprint came an opportunity to add equipment that could not fit into the old lab. The most significant new addition has been a large multi-purpose kiln that opens the door to a whole new range of glass-related processes from slumping to fusing to casting. Last year we hosted a casting workshop taught by Daniel Clayman, as well as a “warm glass” fusing and slumping workshop, taught by Glass Lab student and instructor Marianna Linz (PhD, EAPS, 2017). This new kiln is now in almost daily use.

SPECIAL PROJECTS: The Glass Lab continues to incubate projects that lie at the intersection of art and science. Starting before the renovation and continuing since, the Glass 3D Printing project (G3DP) has progressed from rudimentary experiments to a full-fledged platform capable of CNC printing optically transparent glass objects at architectural scale. In collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, G3DP continues to move ahead into exciting new territory. Last spring, members of the Glass Lab and the Media Lab’s Mediated Matter Group traveled to Milan, Italy to install a pavilion of 3D printed illuminated glass columns at the Triennale Museum as part of Design Week 2017.