Peter B. Houk

Biography

For the last two and a half decades, Peter Houk has worked closely with Professor Michael Cima, faculty director of the MIT Glass Lab, to shape the Glass Lab program as it has steadily grown. He guided the program through a major expansion in 2014 and 2015, which more than doubled the number of students served. In addition to a steady expansion of class offerings, Houk has focused on developing features of the program that introduce glass art to the greater MIT community as well as outside of MIT, such as the annual Page Hazlegrove Lecture in Glass Art and the MIT Great Glass Pumpkin Patch. He has also made the support of student interdisciplinary projects a priority. Results of these projects include G3DP, the first hot glass 3D printing platform using fused deposition modeling, or FDM; VirtualGlass, a free glass modeling software program developed with CSAIL Professor Erik Demaine; and the MIT Glass Band.
 
Houk’s studio artwork consists of architectural glass projects, blown glass, and combinations of the two. Houk received a BA from Oberlin College in 1980 and a MA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1986. Shortly afterward, Houk set up an independent studio practice in Cambridge, where his off-campus studio is still located.