The Taskshade Allows Individuals to Control Glare in Offices

This object might seem silly at first, but it’s actually quite smart.

Dr. Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg is an architect, an architecture professor and the Director of the Institute for Health in the Built Environment. Like all architects, he knows the importance of designing workspaces to admit natural light. But on his visits to offices, he noticed workers often had to improvise their own workarounds to control unwanted glare and reflections: Paper taped to windows and reflective walls, file box lids and umbrellas used as baffles, and even a garbage bag sloppily suspended across a window.

Often these workers don’t have control of the window shades, or even if they do, might create conflict with others by drawing them. What was needed, Dr. Van Den Wymelenberg realized, was individually controllable light-blocking elements that didn’t look like hell. So he designed this Taskshade object:

Here’s Dr. Van Den Wymelenberg explaining how he came up with the object:

Source: core77