70|A FONDO Those of us who graduated from engineering studies, technical or superior, have landed professionally on lighting design through Lighting Technology. From the collection The School of Electricians (“La Escuela del Técnico Electricista”), manual 9 covers the Technique of Electrical Lighting (“Técnica de la Iluminación Eléctrica”) (publishing house Labor 1941) and, on the first paragraph of the first chapter, it states, and I quote: “To project and to carry out lighting installations flawlessly, knowledge of practical foundations of the technique of lighting is essential”. The knowledge of scale, physical and physiological foundations, photometry and a long list of concepts that we have agreed to call Lighting Technology, has been the road taken by the so-called lighting technicians to access the professional field of lighting. Once in, and holding responsibilities in the area of the application of light, in short, of the project, they start building relationships with people from other professions, for example: architects. Architects have always been interested in light management on their projects, even if they do not come to it through Lighting Technology. Still, in their study curricula, the applications of light have been part of their training. Afterwards, and in their professional practice, some of them have written on the topic, though most of them have approached light in a literary way or, like Olvido Muñoz writes, poetically. Juan Luis Trillo de Levya agrees, and in the wonderful text that prologues the work, he writes: “Light has had, what we call, good press. Every architect has felt compelled to say something about light, but of course, nothing practical or enlightening; even though all of them have spoken transcendentally and with lyrical sparks. In general, there has been a lot of feeling but very little knowledge”. As a matter of fact, when a Lighting Technician like me, discusses with an architect the importance and the need for calculations and approximations for natural light, and points out that we should not wait for the final surprise of the outcome, the architect generally says that to take care of this we have engineers. Well, Olvido Muñoz , whose monumental doctoral thesis I had the chance of reading, wanted to close this incomplete circle by taking apart the behavior of natural light in twelve museums of contemporary art designed and built in Spain from 1980 to 2000. Ultimately, to her garb of architect she added one of engineer and started calculating, testing, evaluating and explaining her findings. In this work, Olvido Muñoz does the calculations of natural lighting, of the daylight factor (DF) and afterwards, she compares and substantiates in situ, her calculations with actual measurements. She then analyses in depth the information, processes the results obtained and publishes them. As she says: “This book is created in an attempt to support all those who want to work with light”. In the book the reader will not find the calculations, these are in the doctoral thesis. What he will find is an in depth analysis of the behavior of natural light in each of the museums studied, the creative contradictions, the brilliant results; in short, the lights and shadows of natural lighting in the museums. Prior to the commentaries on each of the museums, Olvido Muñoz has written two chapters titled, respectively: “Poetry of light” and “Light and the Museum”. In the first one she echoes many architects with their quotes and reflections on the topic of light. On the second one she walks us through the history of light in the museums and adds a summary of what is called The Technique, in which parameters and criteria of lighting and conservation are laid down. After she observes light in the twelve museums object of the publication, Olvido Muñoz closes with a final chapter: “The modeling of light at the museum” where she presents the most recent theories on the utilization of natural light as illuminant in a museum and she prepared a synthesis of the museums that has great analytical value. At the end the author publishes an extensive bibliography that shows the enormous research done in publications, books and texts. It is required reading for all those who are serious about studying, knowing and learning to project with natural light and for all those with a minimum of curiosity on daylighting design. The author makes a final positive reflection by believing that we are learning and offering her work as an aid to overcome the disparities between the lights and shadows of the museums that are object of the publication. Joaquín Adell Engineer. February 2014 LUCES Y SOMBRAS Spanish Contemporary Museums Author: Olvido Muñoz Heras, Dr. Achitect for the University of Seville. Published by the “Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura y Ciencias de la Construcción, Universidad de Sevilla” (Acade- mic Institute of Architecture and Construction Sciences, Universi- ty of Seville).