MirrorMirror Returns to Buffalo for Albright-Knox Art Gallery Summer Festival

MirrorMirror, the whimsical street tents designed by School of Architecture and Planning faculty members Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis, will return to Buffalo for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's annual fundraising gala on Friday, June 20, 2014.

The mirrored festival tent earned first place in a 2013 design competition sponsored by the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the New Museum and Architizer. The international competition asked designers to reimagine temporary street tents as spaces that can provoke new ways for the public to gather and interact. The tents have been on display at the New Museum in New York City since last summer. 

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery's mirror-themed summer celebration, "MirrorMirror: A Massive Celebration," will also feature the return of the gallery's popular Room No. 2, commonly known as the Mirrored Room (Lucas Samaras, 1966), which has been on loan since 2010. 

Rafailidis' and Davidson's MirrorMirror will house outdoor festivities, including food, dancing and a series of pop-up performances. 

MirrorMirror's main feature is a 45-degree-angled gable roof made from sheets of Mylar foil that are stretched over foam-and-aluminum frames to form glassless, double-sided mirrors. It includes nine structural units consisting of a hinged, mirrored roof that rests atop a base of steel posts. These units can be positioned side by side to form a continuous, 90-foot-long tent. 

“Our structure is very simple, but it relates to you through the mirror effect. You’re seeing something which appears to be there, but is not there, so it has this dream-like quality,” said Rafailidis, an assistant professor of architecture at the School of Architecture and Planning.

“Our work focuses on creating structures or buildings that relate to people, independent of how or where the structure is being used,” said Davidson, a clinical assistant professor of architecture. “MirrorMirror amplifies the activity of the city no matter what the setting is.”