As part of the IDEAS CITY Festival, in downtown Manhattan, Storefront for Art and Architecture and the New Museum, in collaboration with Architizer, announced today that the architecture and design firm Davidson Rafailidis—led by Georg Rafailidis and Stephanie Davidson of Buffalo, New York—has won the IDEAS CITY StreetFest Tenting Competition. The international biennial competition is a vehicle for making the ubiquitous street fair tent more sustainable and visually compelling. Recognizing the downtown Manhattan district as a potential innovation zone, IDEAS CITY fosters not just artistic activity, but also broader types of creativity and resourcefulness for greater innovation and economic development in fields beyond the arts.

The winning “MirrorMirror” tent design will premiere at the IDEAS CITY StreetFest on Saturday May 4, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The “MirrorMirror” tents will be located along the stretch of block in front of the New Museum (Bowery at Prince Street) and Sara D. Roosevelt Park and will host projects within (see About IDEAS CITY StreetFest below for project highlights). The inaugural winning design from 2011—“The Worms,” by the emerging New York City–based designers Family and PlayLab—will also be in use.

The ceiling of the “MirrorMirror” tents reflects the cityscape and human activity on the ground, offering a more dynamic, intensified view of street activities. From the exterior, the tent “roofs” will reflect the skyline and draw the public’s attention more directly to the architecture of downtown Manhattan—a feature that poetically addresses the Festival’s overarching objective to raise consciousness of the potential that surrounds us in the urban environment and to encourage awareness of the Untapped Capital in the city. The multi-configuration design utilizes aluminum frames with Mylar mirror foil—now modified for use as a construction material, but most often used as glassless mirrors in dance studios.

Ideas Streetfest:

May 4th Saturday, 11am-6pm

IDEAS CITY explores the future of cities around the globe with the belief that arts and culture are essential to making them better places to live, work, and play. The IDEAS CITY Festival includes a Conference, Workshops, StreetFest, and more than one hundred independent projects and public events. At the public outdoor IDEAS CITY StreetFest, scores of inventors, small business owners, artists, ecologists, and activists will share their products and concepts demonstrating the value of Untapped Capital—the Festival’s current theme.

Image: © New Museum