Archinect - News

BIG creates mirrored installation for Audi at Milan Design Week

2024-04-25T11:46:00-04:00

Bjarke Ingels Group has designed an installation for the car brand Audi, installed at Milan Design Week. Titled ‘Reflaction,’ a play on the words “reflection” and “action,” the installation seeks to convey how “our actions in the world reflect the very essence of our existence,” according to Audi.

Image credit: Audi House of Progress

The installation is configured as a ‘plus’ symbol when viewed from above, dividing the site into four spaces constructed from a minimal selection of materials. The walls of the installation are formed of 33 x 28-foot mirrors, which, according to Audi, “creates an immersive spatial illusion, highlighting the brand's continuous effort to overcome the limits of innovation.”

Image credit: Audi House of Progress

Each space is grounded in a particular theme, namely Community, Knowledge, Performance, and Digital. The Community section features a ‘circular forest’ of Japanese maples to provid...

Olafur Eliasson's mirrored desert installation in Qatar asks visitors to 'look down at the earth and self'

2022-11-04T12:36:00-04:00

Olafur Eliasson has completed a site-specific piece of public artwork in a northern-Qatari desert. Titled Shadows travelling on the sea of the day, the Icelandic-Danish artist’s work is inspired by the “interplay of human perception and the natural world.”

Eliasson’s piece comprises twenty mirrored circular shelters along with three single rings and two double rings. The rings are positioned according to the axes of a fivefold symmetrical pattern, while at the center, ten of the piece’s shelters are connected and arranged to form a five-pointed star.

Photo credit: Iwan Baan

Beneath the shelters, the ceilings are mirrored to reflect the earth. “Looking up, you come to realise that you are, in fact, looking down: at the earth and at yourself,” Eliasson explained. “Above and below, sand envelops you, together with anyone else sharing the space. To test what you see, you might extend an arm and wave to yourself or wiggle a foot while looking at your reflection. It is a kind of realty ch...

Prefab cabins that 'disappear among the trees' designed by Canadian architects

2022-04-14T09:00:00-04:00

Québec City-based architects Bourgeois Lechasseur have completed a set of contemporary cabins in the woods near the Canadian metropolis. Titled Reflection, the two identical cabins sit on a flat clearing close to Massif Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, a popular ski resort.

Photography by Adrien Williams + Maxime Brouillet

Despite the far-reaching scenic views, the cabins seek to engage guests with a close, intimate relationship with nature, creating lodgings that would “almost disappear among the trees.” This disappearing act is centered on a completely mirror-glazed main façade reflecting the surrounding woodlands, with darkened wooden slats covering the other three sides.

Photography by Adrien Williams + Maxime Brouillet

Several design moves were made to create continuity between the interior and exterior. The entrance to each cabin has been pushed inwards, with a light pine used to clad the ceiling of both the external patio and internal spaces. The dark wood cladding from the ext...

A historic McDonald's makeover in the heart of Moscow is Landini's latest innovative menu item

2022-01-12T17:00:00-05:00

One of the more underrated landmarks of 20th-century geopolitics has undergone a complete transformation into a mirrored elevation of the surrounding community thanks to the latest in a global series of innovative redesign projects from Landini Associates for McDonald’s.

To mark its 30th year of operation in the former Soviet capital of Moscow, McDonald’s asked the Australian-based firm to remake the historic Pushkin Square restaurant into a more modern and experimental space that would double as the company’s Russian flagship and the home of a special initiative called Project Ray.

Photography by Anton Voronkov

Named after founder Ray Kroc’s vision to create a respectful and quiet space for people to take a dignified break from the every day, the project’s brief has meant reimagining the restaurant as a service point in heavily trafficked urban environments in order to be more appealing to a millennial consumer base. This has brought new spaces from La...

Saint Laurent taps Doug Aitken to help present its SS22 line in Venice

2021-07-19T14:43:00-04:00

A temporary installation by Doug Aitken is gracing the runway in Venice thanks to a new commission from fashion giant Saint Laurent.

The artist’s latest work titled Green Lens is a glowing, 10-pronged kaleidoscopic pavilion made from mirrored aluminum panels that sits on a defunct 54-acre military installation hosted on an island called La Certosa.

Image courtesy Saint Laurent.

Aitken uses an admixture of locally-sourced plants, artificially-generated mist, and colorful lighting to create an immersive activated sculpture he says is inspired by the set designs from his favorite Andrei Tarkovsky films. The installation’s focus on ecology and litoral setting elevates a long-held sense of the natural world that the 53-year-old artist has made a focus of throughout his three-decade career.

Image courtesy Saint Laurent.

“It’s something that the viewer can be a part of, the landscape around it can be part of,” Aitken told ARTnews.

Seasonal presentations in the industry had been upended in ...

Looking back at SOFTlab's interactive “Iris” inside the Mirror Chapel in Prague

2018-11-06T13:33:00-05:00

Located within the intricate interiors of the Mirror Chapel in Prague, “Iris” is an interactive installation that New York-based design studio SOFTlab created for the city's 2018 Signal Festival, which took place last month.

Designed to blend the elements of light and sound, the circular installation has mirrors that rotate in response to movement and LED lights that respond to ambient sound.

Photo courtesy of Signal Festival.

“As the mirrors rotate, they open the perimeter allowing not only direct views of the Mirror Chapel, but also creating a ‘Mise en abyme’, mixing the surrounding chapel, viewers, and light in a vertically fragmented, recursive, and panoramic image,” SOFTlab describes.

Photo courtesy of Signal Festival.

The mirrors reflect both the Mirror Chapel's embellished surroundings while infinitely reflecting the viewer inside the installation's circular space. But when the viewer moves closer to the mirrors out of curiosity, they suddenly ...

MVRDV completes a white and gold entertainment complex by Seoul’s Incheon Airport

2018-09-21T16:38:00-04:00

MVRDV has recently completed The Imprint, a new 2-building art and entertainment complex next to Seoul’s Incheon Airport. Featuring a nightclub in one building and indoor theme park in the other, the windowless structures are part of the larger Paradise City complex of 6 buildings next to South Korea's largest airport.

The Imprint by MVRDV, located in Seoul. © Ossip van Duivenbode

The program required an expressive facade with no windows. The firm created an imprint based design using façade features of the surrounding buildings, lifted entrances, and a golden entrance spot covering one corner of the nightclub building.

The façade was constructed of glass-fibre reinforced concrete panels. As many of the 3,869 panels are unique with construction requiring moulds to be individually produced using the f...

"Kinetic" steel museum in New Zealand pays tribute to illustrious sculptural artist Len Lye

2015-08-04T15:51:00-04:00

The Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth, Taranaki in New Zealand stands as an emblem of the sculptural works and philosophy of acclaimed artist Len Lye, who was a prominent figure in the kinetic sculpture and experimental film movements throughout the 20th century. Celebrating its grand opening late last month with the Govett Brewster Art Gallery, the Centre is the culmination of a more than three-decade endeavor in building a permanent home for Lye’s archive of work. As an expansion to the Govett Brewster, the Centre is the only museum in the country that is dedicated to a single artist.

The New Plymouth District Council financed the building through an extensive government-led fundraiser and commissioned New Zealand practice Patterson Architects Associates to design the new building. Keeping their true client — Len Lye — in mind, Pattersons fused significant elements of the artist's inspirations into their design, including Maori motifs, Greek classical temples, and the manipulation of ...

INABA's Flatiron Plaza installation adds a frame to NYC landmarks

2014-12-26T17:27:00-05:00

Back in September, Archinect published INABA's winning entry for the first-ever Flatiron Plaza Holiday Design Competition. Titled "New York Light," the public artwork was recently installed for the holidays and is now open to the public on...well, Flatiron Plaza.

Project description from INABA:

The Flatiron Plaza is a unique space in New York.

Standing in the middle of the plaza people can see two of the city’s great landmarks: the Flatiron and Empire State buildings. It is a place to experience the magnificence of Manhattan’s urban plan – with a dramatic view of Broadway cutting diagonally through the famous grid. And because Madison Square Park creates a clearing in the urban fabric, the plaza is one of the few places in the heart of the city to see the skyline from street level.

Our public art installation ‘New York Light’ pays tribute to the special urban experiences from this one-of-a-kind vantage point. Designed to echo the form of the plaza’s namesake building, the prow of the st...

Lucid Stead by artist Phillip K. Smith III illuminates Joshua Tree, California

2013-11-22T21:03:00-05:00

Now here's a little weekend inspiration. "Lucid Stead" is an art installation by Phillip K. Smith, III in the beautiful desert landscape of Joshua Tree in California. With some mirrors, LED lights, custom built electronic equipment, and Arduino programming, Smith transformed a 70-year-old homesteader shack into an architecture piece that complements and contrasts with its peaceful environment throughout the entire day.

All images courtesy of Phillip K. Smith, III; photographers: Steve King, Lance Gerber, Lou Mora (see image gallery below for details)

Davidson Rafailidis Wins 2013 IDEAS CITY StreetFest Competition

2013-04-25T14:46:00-04:00

The submission "MirrorMirror" by Buffalo-based architecture practice Davidson Rafailidis has been selected by Storefront for Art and Architecture and the New Museum as the winning entry of the 2013 IDEAS CITY StreetFest Tenting Competition.