In a unified integration of
architecture and nature, there’s an Invisible Barn, design by New York design
practice STPMJ. Indeed a truly amazing site-specific architectural folly that
reflects and merges with the surrounding landscape. It is originally submitted
as a proposal to the famous Folly competition, the parallelogram-shaped
structure was designed to stand in a dense grove of trees in the Socrates
Sculpture Park.
It is purely made by wood and
sheeted with mirror film; the barn becomes one with nature, reflecting the
surrounding birch trees, blue sky, and signs of the changing seasons. When you
see it from a distance, the structure looks almost invisible, erasing its
manmade architectural presence. When you’d be approaching the building,
however, you can see incisions in the mirrored surface that permit them to
maneuver in and out of the structure, adding an exclusive sense of interaction
and experience.
The Invisible Barn is meant to
re-contextualize the landscape of the park by projecting the surrounding
scenery onto the surface of the structure. The visual illusion that blurs the
perceptual boundary between the folly and the site permits the folly to be
vanished and invisible in nature, reconstructing the landscape of the site.
