Within the atrium of Paris’ Le Bon Marché department store, shoppers pause to gaze at a mirrored cube punctured by a glowing full-pipe skate ramp. The installation is a partnership between Chicago architecture firm MANA and skateboarder Scott Oster, created as the centerpiece of the Los Angeles Rive Gauche exhibition.

Part sculpture, part stage, the modern skate ramp is a draw even when it’s not hosting live performances.

“Le Cube acted as a thought-provoking intersection between sport and sculptural art,” says MANA. “When a performance was occurring inside, the atmosphere was dynamic and stimulating. When it was not being activated, Le Cube sat quietly, luminously reflecting the architecture of its surroundings—warm lights, decorative iron handrails, and the famous crossing escalators of Le Bon Marché.”

The reflections were designed to create an illusion that the full-pipe was “a cylindrical void suspended within the open interior courtyard of the store,” and the mirrored surfaces amplify the displays that surround the cube on multiple levels.

The exhibition brings a little slice of L.A. to one of the world’s most refined cities, with Le Cube specifically referencing the street culture that gives Los Angeles much of its personality.

MANA hid a small access door in the base, eliminating the need for visually disruptive ladders, while safety wires protect the ramp openings almost invisibly. The reflective panels are made of lightweight aluminum to withstand vibration from skating.

Scott Oster says he wanted the piece to be a skateable work of art.

“My inspiration for the Adaptation cube was the photos I saw as a kid in the 70’s skateboard magazines of these massive cement full pipes in the desert,” he tells Le Bon Marché magazine. “My original idea was to find one of these pipes and set it on top of a pedestal, but after some research that was not a viable possibility. That’s when I came up with the idea of building one, and instead of building a full pipe sitting on a pedestal, make a cube with the full pipe inside it. I love the simplicity and form of a circle and a square.”

Waterproof and windproof seem like small bonus features next to the dazzling look of this jacket design, the shell of which is covered in microscopic spheres that mimic the adaptive camouflage of squids.

Developed by Vollebak, this high-tech creation used lasers to embed these tiny balls into resin along the triple-layered surface of the garment, creating a slick metallic oil-like effect by day and then a dazzling spectrum of reflective wonder at night.

“The Black Squid Jacket focuses on replicating the elements of squid skin that make it hyper-visible,” explains the designer. Whereas “a squid uses microscopic plate-like structures on the surface of its skin to change color, our jacket uses disruptively-structured microscopic glass spheres.’

“When light hits the jacket, it travels through the curved surface of these black glass spheres and strikes the back of them, before being reflected back at the original light source and scattered away from it simultaneously, so that the fabric looks like it’s emitting light.”

The newest of China’s surreal mirrored bookstores is now open in Chongqing, offering a disorienting, Escher-like experience to all who enter. Designed by X+Living, the Chongqing Zhongshuge Bookstore leads visitors through an unassuming glass facade on the third floor of Zodi Plaza and into a reflective maze full of reading materials waiting to be discovered.

Within the lobby is an arrangement of lampshade-shaped bookshelves that curve around illuminated reading spaces, their mirror images on the ceiling making them look much taller than they really are. “The bookshelves reflect on the ground and form a tunnel of books that beckons visitors to follow it deeper into space and knowledge,” says X+Living.

Further down the hallway, a “ladder hall” offers three levels of bookshelves accessed by branching staircases. The mirrors make it difficult to tell where the real shelves end and the reflections begin, but the space would be marvelous even without them. An adjacent children’s room is brighter in color, but similarly disorienting.

“Up to the 4th floor from the ‘ladder hall”’is a leisure area, where visitors can enjoy the aroma of coffee or a taste of good tea and immerse themselves into a tranquil world of different stories by reading. The ‘lampshade-shaped bookshelves’ around create scattered booths at this area, in which visitors may gather with friends to have fun reading and enjoy their leisure time. Connected to the leisure area is the extensive reading hall, where works of great minds are listed and visitors are able to broaden their eyes and enrich their spiritual world.”

Previously, the same studio designed floor-to-ceiling curved and mirrored bookshelves at the Yangzhou Zhongshuge bookshop, creating the effect of a tunnel of books. Check it out here.

Mirrored inside and out, a new installation set in a snowy valley in Switzerland will never look exactly the same twice. Created as part of this year’s alpine arts festival Elevation 1049 by Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken, “Mirage Gstaad” almost disappears into the stark landscape when gazing at it from a distance, while inside its prismatic reflective planes produce somewhat of a disorienting effect.

Bent, folded and multiplied, the scenery around the cabin is the star of the show, constantly evolving depending on the time of day, the weather and the quality of the light. On a sunny day, the mirrored ranch-style cabin can be intensely dazzling, and its facades are equally striking at sunrise and sunset. Aitken describes it as “chameleon-like.”

“In the tradition of land-art as a reflection of the dreams and aspirations projected onto the American West, Mirage Gstaad presents a continually changing encounter in which subject and object, inside and outside are in constant flux. With every available surface clad in mirror, it both absorbs and reflects the landscape around in such ways that the exterior will seemingly disappear just as the interior draws the viewer into a never-ending kaleidoscope of light and reflection.”

“As Mirage Gstaad pulls the landscape in and reflects it back out, this classic one-story suburban house becomes a framing device, a perceptual echo-chamber endlessly bouncing between the dream of nature as pure uninhabited state and the pursuit of its conquest. Situated against the backdrop of Videmanette in Gstaad, Mirage Gstaad will bring the idea of the Manifest Destiny and the American West into contact with the European landscape and the tradition of the sublime.”

Mirage Gstaad is on view until January 2021, and is accessed on foot from the Gruben of Shönreid strain stations via hiking trails.

Cozy on the inside and virtually invisible on the outside, this Modernist home has a reflective facade allowing it to blend in with the natural environment. Meanwhile, residents can enjoy views out thanks to the one-way mirrored panels.

Designed by Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao (images by Rory Gardiner), the vacation complex in Monterrey has been dubbed Los Terrenos (Spanish for “The Terrains”). Each of three structures in the set are based primarily on one material: glass, earth or wood.

The earthen home has solid walls for privacy, ideally suited for bedrooms. Open-plan living, dining and kitchen spaces are in the more open and naturally lit glass companion building.

The glass curtain wall of the mirrored structure is hung to minimize interruption on the exterior, creating a nearly seamless reflective effect.

The other soil-based structure is composed of clay brick and rammed earth, creating a grounded contrast with its disappearing partner. The third structure has yet to be built, but will be elevated and wooden, again tying it to the forested surroundings.