Building

“A Mirrored Installation Lets You Crawl Up Walls Like Spider-Man”

by John Pavlus via “FactcoDesign”

Augmented reality! Kinect hacks! Enormous video projections! We’ve seen all kinds of wacky digital ways of making immersive, arty illusions. Here’s what we love about Bâtiment (Building) by Leandro Erlich: It just uses mirrors. To do what? How about float in midair, scale a building like Spider-Man, or defy gravity like someone in an Escher drawing (or David Bowie in Labyrinth). Is that “immersive” enough for you?

The design trick behind Erlich’s installation is child’s play: Build the facade of a building on flat ground, and then erect an enormous mirror standing perpendicular to it. The “building” is reflected, life-sized and standing-up, in the mirror. But because the physical facade is safely on the ground, anyone can walk around or lay down or otherwise playfully pose themselves on it, and look up to see themselves “stuck to” the mirror-building’s vertical surface.

Cheap trick? Maybe, but it’s the attention to detail writ large that makes Bâtiment feel more authentic than any digital simulation. . . . .

There are two famous cathedrals in Salamanca, Spain–the first is the old portion first built in the 12th century and renovated in the 14th century. Within are dozens of antique works of art depicted throughout the tower.

This smaller tower was then built on out in the 16th and 18th centuries into the New Cathedrals that still stand there today. Because the Cathedrals were built and renovated so many times, they reflect centuries of architectural styles and are an amalgam artistic history.