Mirage Gstaad Doug Aitken’s installation in Swiss Alps

Mirage Gstaad is the mirrored house installation by the artist Doug Aitken who dialogues with surrounding Swiss Alps landscape.

Famous artist Doug Aitken has created an installation that looks like a house covered with mirrors on the snow-capped mountains of Gstaad, Switzerland. The work is called Mirage Gstaad because it is able to reflect the surrounding landscape, which becomes a mirage in the eyes of the viewer.

Doug has previously placed a similar work, “Mirage”, in the desert outside of Palm Springs in 2017 and inside a former state-owned bank in Detroit last year. As the artist says:

“The viewer can come back to the piece as the seasons are changing, in fall in a storm or in the summer when it’s a green pasture. As our lives change the artwork is shifting with us”.

The structure is modeled on Californian ranch developed in the 1920s and 1930s that incorporated ideas of modernist architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In addition, visitors can also access the house interior, as it has an open door that leads into a large kaleidoscope-effect room.

The house will remain on the mountain for two years “reflecting and interacting with the mountain landscape during the seasons”.

Courtesy of  Collater