Mirror Stage | June14 Meyer-Grohbrügge&Chermayeff

Located on 16th Street Mall, The Mirror Stage by June14 Meyer- Grohbrügge&Chermayeff is surrounded by diverse socioeconomic and ethnic populations. The project creates a collective identity for this group by adding butterflies—mall-goers share a common perspective on their new companions creating a type of social unification. Each of the butterfly cages encloses a different piece of site furniture, engages a different set of buildings, and is a unique size and proportion to strengthen the perception that they are a cohesive group of outsiders encouraging investigation. The Mirror Stage solves visual problems at various scales. At the block scale, cables connect to the tops of adjacent buildings, subdividing the void above the street. Guiding one’s gaze upward, they reshape the compressed space of the mall into an expansive volume. The butterfly habitats concentrate one’s attention creating an escape from the mall’s cacophony. If the cables alter the visual identity of the mall by way of distraction, the cages do so by way of focus.