Phantasien

Realities:United // 2014

Glass|Mirror
Mill Woods Library - 2610 Hewes Way

About

Loosely inspired by the children’s classic The Neverending Story, this art installation – a quiet study room – provides a deceptively large space for exploration and reading. Called Phantásien (Fantastica) the arrangement of mirrors produces the “infinity effect” of a double-mirror installation. The tinted, mirrored surfaces do not produce objective reflections but are influenced by the individual character of the coloured mirror(s). Back and forth, these colours are superimposed and lead to a gradual disappearance of the original image within the depth of the reflection space. The result is an endless amount of space for the reader‘s imagination and interpretation.

Realities:United

In 2000 the brothers Tim Edler and Jan Edler founded realities:united (realU), a studio for art, architecture and technology. realities:united develops and supports architectural solutions, usually incorporating new media and information technologies. The office provides consulting, planning, and research, also undertaking projects for clients such as museums, businesses, and other architectural firms.

One major focus of realities:united is architecture’s outward communicative capacity. Another is the quality of the user experience inside spaces, which in function and appearance is essentially augmented and changed by additional layers carrying information, media content and communication. Some of the studio’s projects resemble classical architectural work, but venture regularly into art, design, or technology research. Most projects are intended to serve as a catalyst in a given situation, and are therefore strongly determined by identifying, transforming, amplifying, and combining various existing potentials. In that sense the approach centres on taking advantage of available opportunities, rather than specific skills, procedures, or tasks. Although the majority of the projects incorporate new technologies or experimental approaches in one way or the other, the work always aims to affect actuality, not virtuality.

Strategic initiative and a high proportion of communication and mediation in work processes mark
many of the firm’s innovative projects. This approach creates the bridge between utopian ideas, abstract conceptions and realizations and has been recognized internationally. Currently realities:united is working on new projects in Europe, Asia and the USA.