Some designers revive shipping containers as jazzy modern homes, others, like Masakazu Shirane and Saya Miyazaki turn them into trippy life-size kaleidoscopes. Completed for the Art in a Container competition at the Kobe Biennale, a celebration of art culture across Japan and overseas, Wink Space stars a 40-foot long shipping container that has been jammed with 1,100 triangular mirrors. As Architect's Newspaper explains, the mirrored panels, which form a huge prismatic polyhedron that hyper-exaggerates any bit of movement, have also been lined with zippers so "the whole structure could fold like origami along the zipper seams."
The larger implication of this project is what the designers call "zipper architecture," a concept they've been working on for years. "This idea could solve global environmental problems because it is easy to exchange only [one] part with a zipper," the designers tell AN. Anyway, it's certainly cool to look at:
· Human-Sized Kaleidoscope at the Kobe Biennale Wows with Prismatic Color and Zipper Architecture [Architect's Newspaper]
· This Place Sure is Trippy for an 800-Year-Old Italian Castle [Curbed National]
· All shipping containers coverage [Curbed National]