ring installation
paris,france
by arnaud lapierre
Ring installation was designed by a French designer, Arnaud Lapierre with collaboration of AUDI. It was showcased at place vendôme, paris, at the 2011 foire internationale d’art contemporain (FIAC). The design is actually quite simple but the effect and impact that created is way stronger. It consist of a series of mirrored cubes placed in a circular pattern, with size of 5500x4000.
The installation embodies a visual effect that is to connect all of these interactions through the implementation of an optical effect: the repetition of a cubic mirror to break the perception of the place. The Ring visually deconstructs space, but does not reconfigure it physically. If the cube was made of timber or steel, it won’t create this kind of feeling.
When you look at the exterior of The Ring, it actually reflected the surrounding historical French building, the floor and the sky. It tend to be invisible and try to blend into the site. The buildings appear and reappear between the mirrored surfaces and voids, changing the perception of space and enclosure for each user. It makes this installation much more interesting. There’s something that’s contemporary appear at the center of the square, which doesn’t really blend in the sense of material but the surface of mirror reflects the building. That’s how it try to “blend in” the surrounding.
When the sunlight shine on it, some part the mirrors reflected the sunlight and create reflected glare on the floor while some part cast shadow on the floor. It attracts the people walking near the installation to see because it’s so eye catching. It somehow lighten up the square and makes this square alive. One thing that I feel that’s amazing is, the exterior changes according to weather. When it’s under big hot sun, the shadow is strong and reflected sunlight is more too. When it’s cloudy, the color of the Ring changes, become grey color. When you see it at different day, different time, it would be different. Even though the form is the same but the image that it created is different every time. In addition, the surrounding also directly affects the outlook. There’s difference between square full of people and square with less crowd.
If you could walk around this installation, you will have different experience at different spot. It would never has two mirror that reflects one same image. This leading people to walk around it and have fun.
One of the purpose of this installation is let people to walk inside and see his/her own image multiplied to infinity, which collides with urban detail. The vision is more intimate. It would be very chaotic for the interior because the distance between human and mirror is closer and the reflected image is more due to the cylinder design. I prefer the sense of infinity reflection that created inside the Ring because it’s very interesting. We don’t usually experience this kind of optical illusion in our daily life so this idea is a fresh and fun idea for me. Imagine looking a lot of your reflected images, moving while you’re walking, it would be a new experience for me .I would takes a long time to observe every single cubic mirror that create different mirrored images of me. Even if I standing stay, the images on the mirror still changing due to the passerby. That’s how a good installation being design, to be able to makes people to stay longer, observe and experience the space.
In conclusion, one of the message that I could get from this installation is, we as an architecture student should design architecture that blends the surrounding. There’s always a must to take care of harmony between architecture and environment. We must try to respect the surrounding, with the least harm towards the environment but of course, using mirror doesn’t mean that it blends the surrounding. We need to take care of human too.
Profile
Arnaud Lapierre, born in 1978, graduated from ENSCI in 2007. After a stint in New York, he became part of Jean Nouvel’s design team, in charge of furniture edition for demanding collaborations such as Molteni and Plotrona frau. Today freelance designer, Arnaud has exposed work in galleries such as Maat, 62, Strouk and Triode and designed for companies such as Invicta, Bernardaud, Ligne Roset and Domenicomeni. Arnaud has won numerous prizes including the prize for innovation at the Saint Étienne biennale in 2006, and the design Agora in Bordeaux; most recently he won the Audi Talents Award in 2011 with Field.