North American Sundial Society

The large analemmatic sundial in front of the Harton Theater North Entrance of Southern Arkansas University (SAU) is being formally dedicated on Thursday, November 5th, 2016 in memory of the late David Thomas Smith, a 1957  SAU alum and  retired assistant director of the SAU Physical Plant.

The Smith Sundial, funded by family and friends of David Smith was built by the SAU Department of Art and Design and engineers of the SAU Physical Plant.  Patrick Finney was the construction supervisor and Steven Ochs was the project concrete art designer and craftsman.  As described in the NASS Sundial Registry, Dial #800 is "a 22 by 17 foot analemmatic dial of stained concrete with Arabic hour numerals of polished brass.  The dial perimeter and hour numerals are set in a blue decorative polymer "U" arc, appearing as a large mule shoe that represents the university Muleriders mascot symbol.  Dial colors represent the royal blue and gold school colors."

As reported by Southern Arkansas University, "The Smith Sundial at SAU is one of only four Arkansas sundials that are registered on the North American Sundial Society, and the only one outside of Little Rock and North Little Rock. It is also the only sundial in the state that is [a monumental] analemmatic..."

Read more at: https://web.saumag.edu/news/2015/10/28/sau-to-dedicate-smith-sundial-on-nov-5/

Greenwich Globe - Alisa Goikhman

Alisa Goikhman has put into art  a sculpture called the Greenwich Globe.  What started as a simple idea of dividing Canada and the US into time into time zones 15^o wide (one hour steps), today's meridian boundaries create a complicated map.  Goikhman projects this map onto a globe with the ragged ridges of each time zone, sequentially enlarging the meridians using the proportions of an Archimedes spiral.

Goikhman explains: " The Greenwich Globe's shape was generated by an algorithm that treated time as physical matter.  Each additional hour is represented through a constant degree of elevation and a 15^o angle bend.  The elevation based map projections gives easy-to-read shape to the complex man-made system of time-zones.  It also operates as a sundial, a play on the now familiar row of world time clocks.  The shadow it casts on a wall is meant to be read as a world watch.  Each spike in the shadow shows the local time at a corresponding geographical region."

As reported in Design Bloom architect Kikuma Watanabe has designed a beautiful modern house integrating asundial and solar design principles: "The internal spaces support a comfortable environment where in summer it is naturally cool and in the winter it is warm. This ecological technology aids this passive system using the sun and the wind for an effective air conditioner."

The interior of the house has two-story rooms and lots of natural wood.  But unlike other houses except perhaps for the Cosmic Room in Corregadora, Mexico, it has a built in equatorial sundial. Central stairs lead up to the equatorial dial projection area with the gnomon itself a glass slit window in the roof. But the most important aspects for solar comfort are the angles of the eve overhangs, preventing hot summer sun from entering the windows yet allowing warming sunlight to enter during the winter . Brighter areas such as the kitchen are situated in rooms with southern exposure while the living room faces east looking out upon ponds and hills. Upstairs surrounding the equatorial dial projection ring are two rooms: the Room of Sunrise and the Room of Sunset, and on the main floor facing north is the Room of Shadow.