When was the last time you paused—truly paused—to notice the city and landscape that have long become familiar to you? Mirrors of Zlín, a permanent installation nestled within the wooded grounds of Zlín Castle Park, invites precisely such a moment of reflection. Scattered like glimmering puddles across the grass, these polished, mirror-like forms capture the shifting seasons and fleeting silhouettes of passersby, animating the park with a quiet vitality. More than a visual intervention, the installation proposes a silent, lyrical conversation between people and place—between human presence and the rhythms of nature.

The city of Zlín, an important regional center in the Czech Republic, carries within its name a layered history. Some believe the name derives from slín, Czech for “marl,” a soft sedimentary rock found in the area’s geology. Another, more poetic legend traces the name to zlaté jablko, or “golden apple”—an allusion to mythic utopias and timeless pursuit. In 2022, to mark Zlín’s 700th anniversary, the creative studio Loom on the Moon translated this layered cultural heritage into a series of immersive, site-specific installations composed of sound, light, and polished steel. Through this, they offered a spatial experience that evokes not just memory, but also renewed sensitivity to the natural and cultural environment.

Structured in three parts—Encyclopedia, Immerse, and Statements—the project extends beyond the purely visual. The mirrored forms engage their surroundings through curved reflection; embedded acoustic systems and lighting elements activate the space throughout the day and night. What makes this installation truly distinctive is its sonic dimension: each mirror contains a speaker that transmits field recordings from seventeen bell towers across the Zlín region. These chimes, dispersed throughout the park, create a polyphonic seasonal calendar—a soundscape in motion that aligns not with clocks, but with the ebb and flow of light, weather, and time.

As light shifts across the surface and sound resonates from the ground, visitors move through the park not only spatially but temporally—walking, as it were, between daylight and starlight, between now and memory. The installation becomes a ritual of seasonal turning, a loop of time rendered visible and audible. Mirrors of Zlín reflects not only the city’s past, but also its present state of becoming—bridging nature and technology, imagination and geography, into a living story about time shared between a city and its people.

Design Team | Natália Kaňová, Milan Martinec, Long Phi Trieu, Petr Janák, Vojtěch Šálek, Petr Prouza, Pavel Kosatík, Kateřina Šípková, Alexey Klyuykov, Michal Rataj, Matouš Hejl

Type | Installations 

Size | 36 000 m² 

Location | Zlín, Czech Republic

Client | Statutory City of Zlín