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SubscribeDanish Mirror House reflects its enviornment
05:30 January 16, 2012
The wall of mirrors featured at the end of the pavilion dramatically reflects the surrounding landscape (Photo: MLRP)
Image Gallery (17 images)Danish architectural firm MLRP has come up with a novel way to prevent graffiti and vandalism of a local town hall. By turning the outside walls into mirrors, the team successfully transformed a "drab" building into a local attraction that is hopefully resistant to future graffiti attempts.
The new mirror pavilion has become a popular attraction at Central Park in Copenhagen, Denmark, inviting local visitors to interact with the array of different shaped mirrors, including distorted mirrors, curved mirror doors and invisible entrances. The architect's makeover has extended the existing playground while also creating a distinctive landmark. The wall of mirrors featured at the end of the pavilion dramatically reflects the surrounding gardens and landscape, and creates a mesmerizing impression for passers-by.
The new building also features monolithic black timber volumes and mirrored headboards that can create angles which seemingly distort the surrounding vegetation. From certain points of view the building seems to morph into thin air and dissolve into the adjoining parkland.
The mirror pavilion is the first of three projects that MLRP has developed together with the Municipality of Copenhagen for the Central Park. The other two projects will see a new footbridge across the lake and a new building at the traffic playground. The footbridge design features twisted ropes and an eye line that gives the impression that the bridge is falling into the park's landscape, while the traffic playground will see a fun makeover of an existing building into a collection of different colored houses. And as the name suggests these houses will be red, yellow and green (among other colors), whilst also including street themes such as a bakery, post office and theater.
These future MLRP works should be completed by the end of fall 2012.
Source: Designboom
Now instead of Graffiti there will be a ring of dead birds around their public buildings.
Karl Harmon
- January 16, 2012 @ 05:37 pm PST
Plant trees instead. They look loads better, and graffiti artists don't paint behind them, where nobody can see canyway.
christopher
- January 16, 2012 @ 05:58 pm PST
This is a flight hazard for birds. I agree with the comments left by Karl and Christopher. I thought architects were supposed to learn about the environment not just buildings.
Judy Herscovitch
- January 17, 2012 @ 03:17 am PST
I hope those mirrors are made of polycarbonate or a thrown brick will do a lot of damage. As far as I know, you can paint on glass. Then there is the expense of large mirrors.
windykites1
- January 17, 2012 @ 10:28 am PST
I'm positively impressed. It is an innovative, intriguing, approach to exterior building design that is likely to influence future architecture. Without adopting the entire approach, buildings could still selectively and usefully employ mirrored sides to reflect and capture beautiful views. A neighbor might also prefer to see an image of his own nearby plantings rather than to see only the side of a nearby building.
Marvin McConoughey
- January 17, 2012 @ 11:10 am PST
Another classic case of Gizmag being mesmorized by shiny things.
The bird kill and garnet sandpaper tagging were already pointed out so I won't repeat.
For vandals (and birdlovers), this'd be an awesome target for an air gun (BB/pellet) or slingshot.
As far as environment goes, these also need to be regularly cleaned by acids, upsetting stream ecology.
solutions4circuits
- January 17, 2012 @ 12:23 pm PST
About the birds,
They can add an infrared film on top of the glass (visible to birds, invisible to humans), like what has been done at this tree hotel in Sweden. http://www.treehotel.se/?pg=mirrorcube
Even if they don't, this building will have only a small impact on birds, probably less of an impact than all the cars driving around the city. FYI, about bird deaths, the average wind turbine kills less birds than the average cat...
srchristensen22
- January 17, 2012 @ 12:30 pm PST
@ dsiple; don't worry about Swedish grafitti artists - the building is in Denmark.
Kim Scholer
- January 17, 2012 @ 03:27 pm PST
Ha ha, now the graffiti artist will have to paint the building across the street and write everything backwards.
davidjdix
- January 17, 2012 @ 09:31 pm PST
Now I am confused!!!!... Which one is easier? Painting a grafitti or throwing a stone??
Maikel Das
- January 18, 2012 @ 04:57 am PST
Good looking, but how does this stop graffiti? It can be done on mirrors as well.
Dawar Saify
- January 18, 2012 @ 06:53 am PST
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It will be easier to remove markers and spray paint. Hopefully, its novelty will keep the Swedish taggers to not resort to using sandpaper on glass as they've done here in the states.