At their best, architects possess the power to transform a space into something unique. By stretching the sky to its limits with structures such as SOM’s Burj Khalifa in Dubai and Gaudí’s playful modernist church, the Sagrada Família, in Barcelona, architects have proven time and again that abstraction has a home in architecture. They can, for example, enhance a building to be less of a standard blocklike motif and more responsive to its environment. One way in particular that architects have harnessed the energy of their environment is by implementing a reflective façade. From Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to the Mirror Houses in northern Italy, AD rounds up 11 of the most spectacular mirrored buildings around the globe.
Designed by Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg is a concert hall that will likely draw more crowds than a traditional building would have.
Completed in 1997, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao houses works of modern art. The structure was, and continues to be a critical success, as it best exemplifies the power of Deconstructivism in architecture.
French architecture studio Bona-Lemercier, artist Xavier Veilhan, and set designer Alexis Bertrand gave the Château de Rentilly a face-lift late last year, covering the 1960s country house in mirrored panels as part of Frac-Île-de-France, a regional program for the contemporary arts. Today the transformed residence, located some 30 minutes outside Paris in Bussy-Saint-Martin, serves as an exhibition space.
Lucid Stead, an installation by artist Phillip K. Smith III, rises in the desert of California’s Joshua Tree National Park like a mirage. In 2013 Smith mounted colored LED lights on an abandoned cabin and wrapped bands of highly polished metal around the structure. The installation reflects the arid terrain during the day and lights it up at night, evoking the surreal quality of a dream.
Reflective surfaces on this roadside café along a tourist route in Gifu, Japan, amplify the pinks, whites, and reds of nearby cherry trees when in bloom. Local firm Bandesign created the simple structure of the aptly named Mirrors café, which features two volumes centered on a planted, graveled garden.
British architect Farshid Moussavi brought her sleek, modernist sensibility to the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA) with a faceted, gemlike design for the cultural institution’s new home. Standing four stories tall on a hexagonal base that comes to a squared-off top, the 34,000-square-foot structure is clad in black stainless steel that reflects the sky or the city lights, depending on the time of day.
Green Orchard, a rectilinear dwelling by Paul Archer Design, is a carbon-neutral house set just outside the city of Bristol, England. Created by the architect for his parents, the home is a model of sustainable design. Features include sliding aluminum panels along the façade that help regulate solar heat gain and encourage ventilation, while a rooftop solar-energy system harvests sunlight and heats 80 percent of the residence’s water.
Set in the scenic South Tyrolean Dolomites, a mountain range in northeastern Italy, the Mirror Houses are a pair of vacation-rental homes, designed by local architect Peter Pichler for a client who lives on-site. Clad in a UV-coated mirrored glass to prevent bird collisions, the units also capture sweeping easterly views of the nearby peaks.
Flatware isn’t the only thing glinting at the celebrated restaurant Steirereck in Vienna, where a recent expansion overseen by local firm PPAG Architects includes mirrored volumes with dramatic windows that slide open vertically.
Foster + Partners designed the Vieux Port pavilion, an alluringly simple mirrored-steel structure in Marseille, France, located in a busy section of the city’s old port. Under the 20-foot-high canopy, pedestrians see their surroundings from a whole new perspective.
For an Irish organization that supports children with developmental disabilities, architecture studio SATA (led by duo Kristoffer Norrinder and Mark Thompson) built the West Limerick Children’s Centre, which is clad in polished aluminum panels that afford occupants privacy.