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Posts Tagged ‘Buildings’

Ouroborus Buildings: Artist Loops Infinite Skyscrapers Back on Themselves

13 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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What would architecture look like if it had no beginning or end, no ground floor as starting point nor rooftop terminus? Artist Vasco Mourao explores exactly that question in his series Ouroboros, so named after the mythical dragon/serpent forever eating its own tail.

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The Barcelona-based artist (an architect by training) illustrates his impossible-sounding seems on curved and angular cuts of plywood shaped into loops.

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His work indirectly addresses a key transition point in the history of architecture as well — a time when concrete, steel and glass were first combined to make taller structure possible but before the Modernists rendered these buildings sleek and simple.

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Like early skyscrapers (featuring stretched Gothic decor and wood-inspired details), his designs extrapolate conventional materials and decorative approaches skyward. Their aesthetic is also reminiscent of places like Kowloon Walled City, where densification drove particularly strange connections between different structures.

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Meanwhile, Mourao also draws other cityscapes on different surfaces as well, from large-scale surrealistic murals to the bottoms of skateboards, often reprising similar themes of infinity-evoking architecture.

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Baubotanik: German Botanical Architect Grows Buildings Out of Trees

04 Jan

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Taking arbosculpture to the next level, German designer Ferdinand Ludwig is working to build not just sculptures but bridges and buildings from living trees. Many of his designs will take years or even decades to fully unfold.

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His largest project yet in Nagold, Germany, was a multistory structure made up over over 100 trees slowly combined into a single organism, coaxed into place with a steel framework that will eventually be redundant. The lattice of interconnected tree trunks and branches ends up forming its own self-supporting truss system.

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The support beams are labeled with the years in which they can be removed, allowing the structure to stand on its own by 2028. Like a conventional curtain wall on an ordinary architectural facade, this system could be used to wrap other buildings as well.

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Even now, though, the slow-growing ‘building’ makes for a shady and cool space in the summer. Through each season, of course, it changes with the natural cycles of spring, summer, fall and winter.

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A pioneer of what he calls ‘Baubotanik’ (think: Bauhaus using botanical techniques), Ludwig’s living plant constructions were inspired in part by native tribes that grow living bridges out of trees over time.

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Evil Architecture: 15 Ominous-Looking Buildings Fit for Scheming Villains

06 Dec

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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With ominous red lighting, creepy statue adornments, ventilation pipes resembling cannons and spaceship-like silhouettes, these buildings put off some seriously evil vibes. It’s hard to imagine how the architects failed to realize they were designing oversized haunted mansions, battleships, missile launchers, murder hotels and the Eye of Sauron, but as the subreddit r/evilbuildings illustrates, there are a whole lot of villainous-looking buildings in the world. Check out Reddit for dozens more.

Battleship Building: Research Institute for Experimental Medicine, Berlin, Germany

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Completed in 1972 to house animal research facilities, Berlin’s Research Institute for Experimental Medicine is a bizarre Brutalist wonder. Its shape coupled with a multitude of ventilation pipes sticking out of the exterior walls makes it look more than a little bit like a battleship – even the globes of the lamps outside could be mistaken for cannonballs in mid-flight.

The Kingdom Centre’s Eye of Sauron, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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One ring to rule them all! By day, the Kingdom Centre tower looks pretty benign. But at night, the skybridge at its pinnacle lights up in various colors, and when this photo was captured, its red glow made it a dead ringer for the Eye of Sauron.

Niagara Mohawk Building, Syracuse, New York

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This beautiful Art Deco building in Syracuse, New York cuts a dramatic silhouette when illuminated after dark, and the winged statue on the front – which is meant to symbolize lightning – has a bit of a foreboding feel to it.

Polygone Riviera Shopping Center, France

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Does this building make anyone else think of the muggle-squashing ‘Magic is Might’ monument that appeared in the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1? It doesn’t help that the expression on this colossal man’s face looks anguished as he peers out from between two sections of the building.

Tomorrow Square Building, Shanghai

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Many people have rightly pointed out that the tip of the Tomorrow Square Building in Shanghai looks like it’s about to launch a nuclear weapon into the sky any time now.

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Evolution of Decay: Watch American Buildings Fall Into Ruin Over 40+ Years

19 Nov

[ By SA Rogers in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Architecture that was at its prime in the 1970s has slowly fallen into decline and often ruin thanks to decades of neglect, especially in America’s poorest and most racially segregated communities, including Gary, Detroit, Camden and Harlem. Many of these structures were historically significant, built between the late 1880s and the 1920s, but when no budget exists to care for them and entire cities are left behind by economic progress, the forces of nature and decay take over.

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In a potent visual representation of poverty in America’s urban centers and the loss of historic architectural character via demolition, Chilean-born photographer Camilo José Vergara has spent the last 40+ years documenting the downfall of dozens of structures and city streets. The resulting series, ‘Tracking Time,’ is a time-lapse in slow motion, photographing the same buildings once every few years.

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One old shop in Harlem gets painted several times over, has its stained glass windows knocked out, loses a facade to an ugly garage door and is split up into multiple smaller businesses before finally being boarded over and transformed into a mini-mall-style church in 2014.

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A massive brick building in South Bronx becomes modest row houses, while The Ransom Gillis House in Detroit (top) sinks into the ground, its bricks falling in clumps, the roof caving in, ivy and trees taking over. It’s almost completely obscured by greenery before a restoration brings it back to its former glory.

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But other stories aren’t so positive, since people care more about mansions than they do about public housing projects, row houses, and modest residential neighborhoods. Occasionally, Vergara ventures inside to show us that even though the facades still look beautiful, like that of the former Camden Free Public Library, the interiors are utterly destroyed.

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It can be a heartbreaking journey but also a fascinating one, watching some of these structures remain the same for many years while the world changes around them before transforming into something new. And some do manage to endure.

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Fashionable Facades: 15 Buildings That Put On An Artistic Face

17 Nov

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Instead of wearing the architectural equivalent of jeans and a t-shirt, these buildings treat their facades like high fashion to stand out from the crowd and make a visual statement. Artistic exterior treatments can give structures a bold makeover, offer multiple functions like built-in courtyards and benches, and engage with the city in ways that ordinary buildings simply don’t.

Mercado de Getafe by A-cero, Madrid, Spain

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An ordinary brick building suddenly becomes extraordinary with the addition of a wrap-around facade by A-cero. The architects created a black envelope for the structure and added aluminum ribs and oversized lighting that protrudes to stick out over the sidewalk.

Hotel Cumbres Lastarria by Rodrigo Errazuriz, Santiago, Chile

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The white facade of this hotel by Rodrigo Errazuriz wraps around the glazed front of the building, turning rectilinear windows into a pattern of abstract shapes.

Izumono Sakaba by Area Connection, Izumo City, Japan

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Architecture firm Area Connection took inspiration from the traditional details on the Izumo Taisha Shrine for this wooden latticework affixed to the facade of a nearby restaurant.

Frankfurter Kunstverein by Joko Avian, Germany

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It’s too bad this cloud-shaped woven bamboo facade installation by artist Joko Avianto was only temporary, as it adds a beautiful new dimension to the exterior of the Frankfurter Kunstverein art museum.

Hotel WZ Jardins by Estudio Guto Requena, Sao Paulo, Brazil

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Exploring the concept of a ‘hacked city,’ the new facade of the Hotel WZ Jardins by Studio Guto Requena is covered in an ‘urban camouflage’ metal skin that lights up at night in interactive patterns, reacting in real time from sensors on the building that collect data on air quality. Passersby can also influence its patterns by logging onto a mobile app and using finger taps or voice commands.

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Parasitic Art: 11 Installations Taking Over Buildings Like Organic Growths

26 Oct

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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Some art just can’t be contained, even by the buildings that house it, expanding beyond these constrictions like alien appendages to burst through windows, wrap around columns and slink onto the sidewalks below. Inorganic materials take on the qualities of living things, manifesting as artificial parasitic growths as they cling to the facades of buildings in architectural installations that take on lives of their own.

Hyperbolic Installation by Crystal Wagner, Poland

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An alien-like growth wraps itself around the corner facade of a historic building in Lodz, Poland, stretching tentacle-like appendages in shades of vivid pink, blue and purple. The site-specific work by Crystal Wagner is made from woven strips of plastic.

Wood Tentacles by Henrique Oliveira

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Wooden forms expand to fill entire interior spaces, taking over light root systems to push through windows and doorways and into the streets, or in one case, to act as a secret system of interior tunnels. Artist Henrique Oliveira of Brazil typically installs his organic sculptures in gallery spaces, but one particular work has it bursting out of the confines of Casa dos Leoes in Porto Alegre.

10,000 Bats on the Nature Concert Hall

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Thousands of bats stream straight out of the front door of the Nature Concert Hall at Zalenieki Manor in Latvia, forming a surreal cloud on its lawn. Architecture firm DJA took inspiration from the unpredictable formations found in nature when assembling the congregation of 10,000 paper bats, which create a tunnel effect when viewed from below.

Vortex by 1024 Architecture, Bordeaux, France

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Strips of wood have taken it upon themselves to escape one building and grip the exterior of another, streaming toward it in a manner suggestive of autonomy. ‘Vortex’ is a generative light sculpture by 1024 Architecture almost completely made of scaffolding, installed on the Darwin Ecosystem Project’s green building in Bordeaux, France. “Merging organic materials with new technologies, this hybrid architectural artwork wraps around and embraces the footbridge between the complex’s two buildings, revealing and enhancing the venue’s dynamic energy while working as a live visualizer of energy consumption.”

Biografias by Alicia Martin, Madrid

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An ornate second-floor window seems to vomit thousands of books onto the sidewalk below in this installation by artist Alicia Martin, as if they, too, are hoping to escape the building. The effect is enhanced by the movement of the pages as they’re blown by the wind. Martin has created similar site-specific installations in buildings all over her home country of Spain.

Glowing Star in an Unfinished Building by Jun Ong

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Like some kind of alien life form that started out tiny and suddenly expanded, impaling an entire building upon itself, this five-story star made of light by Jun Ong suggests rapid growth that could not be contained. The artist envisions the LED sculpture as a physical manifestation of a glitch.

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Parasitic Art 11 Installations Taking Over Buildings Like Organic Growths

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Architectural Interventions: 12 Radical Modern Changes to Historic Buildings

25 Oct

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Honoring the historic significance of deteriorating buildings while reinventing them for modern contexts and usage, these architectural interventions don’t try to erase signs of aging and damage or blend the demarcation between old and new. Cracks in stone manors are filled with glass, elegant Parisian facades are recreated in stark concrete, rusted steel volumes are lowered right into the empty shells of ruined brick houses. Whether renovating or reimagining the original structures, these projects preserve history and highlight the passage of time instead of demolishing or disguising it.

Astley Castle Renovation by Witherford Watson Mann, Warwickshire, England

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Ashley Castle, a former fortified manor for England’s Royal Family that fell into abandoned ruin for decades, comes back to life in the hands of London-based Witherford Watson Mann Architects, who repaired the damaged parts of the space with an insert that simultaneously blends and contrasts with the existing walls. The new brick follows the uneven breaks in the original masonry, preserving it not as it originally looked, but as it looked prior to the renovation, with all its years of history and wear.

Blencowe Hall by Donald Insall Associates, England

All images copyright nicholas yarsley (wizzwam ltd).

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A similar approach fills a crack in Blencowe Hall in Cumbria, enabling a deteriorating former manor house to become a luxury hotel in the countryside. The south tower was missing a roof and had sustained a large breach in its east wall. Donald Insall Associates worked with local architect Graham Norman to insert a steel frame and glazed wall into the reach, retaining it “as part of the story of the building.”

The Dovecote Studio by Haworth Tompkins, England

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The Dovecote Studio is another example of radically preserving ruins that are deemed “too damaged to save” with some creative thinking. Studio Haworth Tompkins filled the empty shell of an abandoned building with a cortex steel building, which reads as an entirely separate structure within the original envelope but complements the red of the old brick as it rusts. The whole thing was preassembled and literally dropped inside by a crane. It now acts as housing for artists in residence, rehearsal space and temporary exhibition space at the internationally renowned music campus at Snape Maltings.

Kew House by Piercy & Company, London

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Very little was left of the original buildings that stood on this street within the Kew Green Conservation Area of southwest London, yet the new construction honors it all the same, incorporating it into the exterior facade. A nineteenth century stable wall acts as the defining architectural feature of the street-fronting side of a new four-bedroom family house by Piercy&Company, retaining its sense of history while allowing the construction of a modern home for modern needs.

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Glitch Cities: Buildings Mysteriously Deleted from Chinese ‘Street View’

10 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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All kinds of architecture is being inexplicably erased from the Baidu Total View image database (analogous to Google Street View) … and whoever is behind it is doing an oddly haphazard job of removing things.

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Freelance photographer Jonathan Browning encountered this mystery a few years ago. He was searching for locations on Total View and discovered a half-erased bridge near some sooty factories and industrial complexes.

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A resident of Shanghai, Browning dug deeper and found government buildings, prisons and other municipal infrastructure. These semi-deleted structures were all over, partially hidden in hundreds of Chinese cities viewed by hundreds of millions of monthly Total View users.

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In some cases, the partial deletions seem intentional – a building might remain with its sign and smoke stacks gone. In other instances, at least some attempt has been made to erase the entire structure. Often, aftereffects of cloning tools and other basic Photoshop-style manipulations are easy to spot in the picture. Since some of these structures are high, many of them have to be edited in dozens of surrounding views, too. Even normal-sized, street-facing buildings often show up in a few different shots.

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Like Google Street view, the images found on Baidu are assembled from shots taken from cars (or persons) with mounted cameras. Also like their international counterpart, Total View removes some sensitive details, but the removals in this case don’t add up in terms of privacy or national security. If anything, they leave traces and thus highlight areas that people like Browning might find worth exploring.

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Of course, Browning had to be careful when driving around and photographing places that someone (corporate or governmental) had decided shouldn’t be on publicly-accessible image maps. In the end, no one seems quite sure what these attempted deletions are all about, and the Chinese government, as usual, isn’t saying a thing (via BldgBlog and Wired).

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Bubble Buildings: 13 Structures You’ll Wish You Could Pop

12 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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Would the satisfaction that comes with popping bubble wrap scale up as the bubbles get larger and larger, until they’re big enough to cover entire buildings? These blobby bubble-shaped buildings tempt us to find out. Inflatable translucent structures offer space for gardens, bathrooms, museum extensions and even entire parks enclosed to keep out air pollution in a literal representation of the term ‘living in a bubble.’

SKUM Pavilion by Bjarke Ingels Group / BIG

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Named ‘SKUM,’ the Danish word for ‘foam,’ this blob-shaped structure is an inflatable balloon pavilion illuminated with colored LED lights by Bjarke Ingels Group / BIG for the CHART Art Fair in Copenhagen. “The idea of using a bouncy castle as material came about because one can create any kind of structure with the material. It is inflatable and easy to pack down and inflate again, but it has been much harder to produce than we thought. The manufacturer almost gave up, and we were under a massive time pressure, but the result is the most beautiful you can imagine.”

Real Bubble Building by DUS Architects

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Now here’s a structure that isn’t just bubble-shaped – it’s actually made out of real soap bubbles. Dutch firm DUS created the pavilion in a Rotterdam square using metal frames in five-sided steel pools to create massive geometric bubbles you can stand inside, calling it “the world’s most temporary pavilion.”

Bubble Extension for the Hirschhorn Museum

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The firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro was all set to add a wild looking inflatable enhancement to the Smithsonian’s Hirshchorn Museum, creating a venue for two months of special programming, but the design was suspended due to costs. You might imagine that a large translucent fabric ‘bubble’ swelling up out of the museum’s internal courtyard would be less expensive than temporarily roofing it and adding additional covered space along the exterior, but the design was pretty complicated, and the museum board was concerned that costly additional issues with its installation would come up.

Transparent Mobile Bathroom

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Would you want to take a bath in a totally transparent bubble with a panoramic vista? This inflatable bathroom pod is intended to be placed in the woods or in rooftops as the ‘ultimate bathroom experience,’ designed after polling groups of people about their dream bathroom. The inflatable structure includes a tub, chair, dresser and basin.

Garden Bubbles for Paris in Winter

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This pop-up art installation in Paris by Amaury Gallon inserted lush greenery back into the city in the middle of winter, providing passersby with 15 minutes of relaxation, beauty and fresh air. Four bubble gardens were placed on city sidewalks, each filled with a different type of plants, including a ‘jungle’ and hundreds of orchids.

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Disappearing Architecture: 15 Mirrored Buildings Distort Perception

04 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Dazzling in the most literal sense, architecture clad in mirrored glass or stainless steel almost seem to become part of the sky and landscapes that surround it so you can’t quite tell where the man-made objects end and nature begins. That’s often the point, with architects creating structures that virtually disappear into their surroundings (to the chagrin of more than a few birds.)

Reflection Field by Phillip K Smith III, Indio, California

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Reflecting the vast open sky and signature palm trees of Indio, California, where Coachella is held each year, the installation ‘Reflection Field’ by Phillip K. Smith III consists of five monolithic volumes that transform all day along with the environment. At night, colored light is projected from within.

Refinished French Country House

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It’s safe to say there’s no French country estate quite as dazzling as this one, now that its facade has been entirely replaced with mirrors. Architecture studio Bona-Lemercier worked with artist Xavier Veilhan and set designer Alexis Bertrand to transform a 1960s home into ‘Le Château de Rentilly,’ a contemporary art gallery.

Guest Houses by Peter Pichler, South Tyrol, Austria

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A pair of vacation homes in the South Tyrolean Dolomites by Peter Pichler offer up space for guests without interrupting the property owners’ view of the stunning mountains. Reflective, but coated in a glare-reducing film to prevent bird collisions, the two ‘Mirror Houses’ blend into the property so they don’t compete with the client’s garden and existing 1960s farmhouse.

Mirrored Ziggurat by Shirin Abedinirad

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“In this installation I have been inspired by the pyramidal structure of ziggurat, a common form of temple in ancient Mesopotamia, attempting to connect earth and sky, so humans could be nearer to God,” says artist Shirin Abedinirad. “The Mirrored Ziggurat acts as a staircase, which seeks to connect nature with human beings and to create union of ancient history and today’s world. The installation offers a transformative view of the self. The Mirrored Ziggurat has seven levels that represent seven heavens. For me, mirrors amplify this paradise, giving light; an important mystical concept in Persian culture, and a medium creating an optical illusion.”

Mirrored Auditorium by MVRDV, Tianjin, China

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It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s reflection when gazing inside the transparent facade of MVRDV’s beautiful new library at the Binhai Cultural Centre in the Chinese city of Tianjin. A mirrored spherical auditorium inside the main atrium reflects both the interior space around it (including all those books!) and the park outside.

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