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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk into a human-sized kaleidoscope? If the thought has crossed your mind but there is nothing of the sort to be found in your neighborhood, you can now live vicariously through the following photographs.

Introducing Wink Space, a work of art made by a pair of Japanese designers at an arts festival last year. Wait till you see its exquisite design–it’s absolutely spellbinding!

As creative minds go, Japanese designers Masakazu Shirane and Saya Miyazaki are at the top of our list. With combined education and work experience in Tokyo, Madrid, Milan, London, and Shanghai, you can bet that they have no shortage of innovative ideas to push artistic limits. Nowhere is their skill better displayed than in the form of one of their recent projects, known as Wink Space.

Wink Space was unveiled at the 2013 Kobe Biennale, which is an arts festival held in the city of Kobe once every two years. The work took home a prize in the “Art in a Container” category, and more recently won a Silver A’ Design Award in the “Arts, Crafts and Ready-Made Design” category.

Yep, we know what you’re thinking–that huge kaleidoscope was actually assembled inside a shipping container! According to the A’Design website, the inspiration for the work was “soft, light and moving architecture,” as well as the traditional Japanese paper folding art of origami. In addition, the structure relies on ‘zipper architecture,’ a new method of building things that holds promising ideals for the future of the medium:

“This is not only artwork but also the first Zipper Architecture in the world. Our idea is to make a kaleidoscope changing by the movement of a person in the container. Therefore, all of the panels are connected by zippers. And parts of it can be opened and closed like a window. This idea could solve global environmental problems, because it is easy to exchange only a part with a zipper, although architecture will have to be repared [sic] when broken.”

Ordinary photos simply won’t do Wink Space justice, but at the very least you can get a sense of what it must feel like to be transported into a surreal, mirrored world with the following photos:

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On a side note, the kaleidoscope motif brought to mind this music video by J-Pop princess Ayumi Hamasaki. Maybe she can produce a future video in collaboration with one of Mr. Shirane’s and Ms. Miyazaki’s works!

Sources/Images: Spoon & Tamago via Byokan Sunday, A’Design Award & Competition 1, 2, 3