An existing 70-year-old desert homesteader shack has been artistically modified into a partly invisible house at the Joshua Tree, California. This mirror house dubbed Lucid Stead is created by American artist Phillip K Smith III. On the first look the Lucid Stead may look like a stunning mirage, but on closer examination, one can see the genius that has gone into the modification. Smith has added mirrors to the walls of an existing shack to create the illusion of transparency. You feel you can see right through the house, but actually the mirrors allow the structure to adapt to lighting characteristics of anything around it, making it look invisible in parts.
The mirrors are placed alternately to the old, worn out timber planks to form horizontal stripes on the exteriors of the walls of the house. This means the mirror strips of the walls look seemingly disappeared in the desert’s magnanimous landscape. In addition to the mirrors on the outside, the shack is illuminated from the inside with LEDs and neon lights, which illuminate the house when the sun goes down.
