MirrorMirror Returns to Buffalo for echo Art Fair
MirrorMirror's design includes a simple forty-five-degree-angled gable roof made from mirroring panels. When combined, the units create a large barn-like structure for hosting gatherings within. Photo by Benoit Pailley
Published September 6, 2013 This content is archived.
MirrorMirror, an inventive, mirrored, street tent designed by architecture faculty members Georg Rafailidis and Stephanie Davidson, is returning to town this weekend for the echo Art Fair.
It will be on display from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 7 near the front entrance of the Central Library, 1 Lafayette Square in downtown Buffalo.
Winner of an international design contest to reimagine street tents, MirrorMirror was originally built in Buffalo. Although it now is the property of the New Museum in New York City, it is returning to Buffalo for the art fair.
Festival tents typically are dull, with plain white canopies that do little to reflect the playful emotions such events are meant to evoke. So to put a twist on these humdrum shelters, Rafailidis and Davidson designed MirrorMirror, an easily transportable, temporary outdoor structure that holds surprises for anyone who walks by or beneath it.
The project’s main attraction is a 45-degree-angled gable roof made from sheets of Mylar foil stretched over foam-and-aluminum frames to form glassless, double-sided mirrors.
Fairgoers underneath the tent can look up and watch their doubles strolling along in the mirror world. Observers outside the tent can see reflections of trees, the city skyline and slices of sky, with clouds floating across the mirrored roof.