Best of #mirrors

With its ability to reflect light and images, to expand the spaces and to blend in with the environment, the mirror is featured in design and architectural projects, that play with these qualities to distort the perception and create amazing visual effects.

Among the works of architecture that have used this material as the main design element the Mark’s House, a Tudor-style house that the British studio Two Islands cladded in reflective panels on top of a mirrored pedestal to give the structure the appearance of floating in mid-air, and the Marseille’s Vieux Port, conceived by Foster + Partners as a simple canopy of stainless steel, with a polished, mirrored surface that reflects the surrounding port. In Cornigliano (Genova) Sp10 has designed a reflective elevator near the eighteenth-century villa Durazzo Bombrini, inspired to Radicals photomontages of Reflected Architecture.

Designed by NAS Architecture for the Festival of Lively Architecture – along the shoreline of La Grande Motte (France) – Breath Box has a reflective wall that moves with the wind; whilst the Dalston House, a temporary installation by the Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich is comprising a life-size house façade lying face-up on the ground with a mirrored surface positioned overhead at a 45-degree angle.

Among the numerous design projects that address the theme of the mirror The Narcissus Desk by Sebastian Errazuriz, a continuation of his functional sculptures, which invite the viewer to look again at everyday objects, spaces and situations, and Triptyques, the latest design of a series of limited-edition mirrors by Jean Nouvel, who defines the mirror as “a piece that you want to live with, in which you reflect intimate images – images from your home; you can capture a piece of a window in it somewhere.” To mirrors and other reflecting surfaces was devoted the exhibition “Reflections”, presented at Triennale di Milano by Belgium is Design during the last Milan Design Week, that tells a story where there is a dynamic dialogue between tradition and progress.

Best of #mirrors:
– Two Islands: Mark’s House
– Foster + Partners: Vieux Port
– A brief trip in a lift
– Breath Box
– Leandro Erlich: Dalston House
– The Narcissus Desk
– Jean Nouvel: Triptyques
– Belgium is Design
 

Top: Two Islands, Mark’s House, Flint, Michigan. Photo Gavin Smith