UNStudio has created a beautifully constructed archway that brightens up the retail sphere of Xintiandi Mall in China. Because it’s lined with mirrors, you can track your movements from beginning to end and watch your surroundings skip playfully across the different planes of the mall’s entrance. It’s like walking down the inside of a wormhole — except you stay safely grounded in both time and space.
The installation also serves as an artistic statement on consumerism, reflecting a warped vision of the activity around it. As the architecture firm describes it: “Simultaneously, the pedestrians’ reflections move between a sequence of three ‘phases’ of context: retail, ground, and urban landscape.”
Additionally, the walkway underneath lights up after sundown to throw reflections into myriad directions through the mall’s entrance. This simple design adds a limitless and dynamic life to the mall’s main square, making it more attractive to consumers.
A look into the manifold of the installation exposes its early, primitive stage before blooming into the malleably colourful product that rests at Xintiandi Mall. If only we could put this much creativity into distracting people from malls instead of towards them. [UNStudio via Inhabitat]
Images: UNStudio