62|A FONDO At the moment, this journey has resulted in a doctoral thesis, a book “Luces y sombras. Museos Contemporáneos Españoles”2 (Lights and Shadows. Spanish Contemporary Museums2 ), various articles3, and lastly a series of photographs, presented also in a video screening and called “Luces y Sombras. Dibujos de Luz” (Lights and Shadows. Drawings with light) that contains the essence of everything learned until now. Lights and shadows. Spanish Contemporary Museums. As an architect fascinated by light, I begin this adventure. The journey starts with a study of the light at the museum on the grounds that building a museum with natural light is one of the biggest challenges that an architect can face. With the thought that whomever could work with light in the interior of a museum successfully, could do it in any other building. To do this, I select twelve museums4 in which natural light plays an essential role; it is part of them. They are well known buildings, the great museums built in Spain at the beginning of the contemporary period in the eighties and nineties. I visit and stay in the museums for several days and soak them up. I draw, photograph and feel them, gathering all my personal impressions of the visits in a series of texts called “Perceiving light....”.Some are sad stories of wonderful buildings that come out with the intention of solving the existing unbalances of light and shadow. I notice that the scene that is played in these museums has been repeating itself through history in different settings. I don the first outfit of this journey: the one of historian, and I plunge in history to discover the origin of man’s activity of collecting and I study its evolution up to present time. These scenes arise as consequence of a thought. The evolution of architecture through history is not only based on the advances in construction; before the action there is a way of thinking, a philosophy. To discover it, I don the second outfit of my journey: the one of philosopher-poet; with it I discover the poetry of light. Then I dare to write my first feelings on it. I realize that after doing all this, my knowledge of light is still incomplete so I put on my third outfit of the journey: the one of physicist-engineer, and I go on to understand the parameters that define light and to measure it in the interior of the rooms in order to quantify it. With time, I develop the curious capacity of turning my eyes into photometers. Because natural and artificial light can be simulated, and to test the accuracy of the results of the computer programs, I perform light simulations of the main rooms of the museums selected and I contrast the results. This work is yet to be published and in the hope that a patron or sponsor appears for it. If the quantity aspect is important in light, much more so is the quality aspect. Not for having more or less light is a project better; not even for having the ability to control consumption. The project is good when light is in the adequate quantity and quality. Each space demands a certain quality and quantity of light for man to feel comfortable in an interior, but it is not always man’s need we have to cater to, because a space can be inhabited by animals or by objects with more or less sensibility to light, for example the interior of a museum. This adjustment is what is really complicated in a lighting project. The quality of light is reflected in the feeling of well-being that it creates; it can move and excite. We have a lot to learn from artists like Olafur Eliasson or James Turrel; they work with light pursuing this feeling. They plunge you in facilities where they isolate you from reality and try to make you find yourself by looking at light and experiencing it. Artists that work with light as a vehicle for experimentation only look for this; besides, they do not need to comply with a function.