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
Please keep comments to less than 150 words. No abusive material or spam will be published.
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.
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...