A New Way to Reflect

There’s a new architecture trend hitting the South, and it reflects our love of the great outdoors. Mirrored cabins and hotels, long popular in picturesque European locations, are making their way to the United States.

The first few in the country are located in Tennessee and North Carolina. The mirrored facades of these structures blend in seamlessly with the surroundings. We can totally see one of these working beautifully among the rolling landscape of Splinter Creek.

Bolt Farm Treehouse
A cluster of Bolt Farm Treehouse's Forest Mirror Cabins recently opened in Whitwell, Tennessee, just outside of Chattanooga. Bolt Farm Treehouse now boasts five mirrored cabins on Whitwell Mountain, adding to their already popular collection of domes and treehouses. “People want to be wowed when visiting new places,” says Tori Bolt, co-owner of Bolt Farm Treehouse. “The visually stunning architecture blends perfectly with nature, providing a fully immersive experience like no other.”

Mirror Hotel
Created by the founders of Asheville Glamping, the Mirror Hotel is comprised of 18 luxury mirror cabins on 55 acres just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. “Since 2019, we have been working on creating the first mirror hotel in the United States, and we are so excited to be bringing this dream project to life,” says owner Joanna Cahill. “We worked with an architect to create two unique designs. We call our Mirror Cabin designs ‘Invisible Cabins’ because they quite literally blend into nature and give our guests a truly immersive outdoor experience.” Cabins are expected to be open for booking soon.

Casa Etérea
Conceived as an off-grid hideaway, Casa Etérea is a mirrored dwelling that sits on the rugged slopes of the extinct volcano Palo Huérfano. It's located in San Miguel de Allende, a small town about 150 miles north of Mexico City. The vision was to create a “theatre to nature” from which guests could experience the mountain, so sustainability was crucial in attaining a truly complete integration with the environment. In order to achieve this, the house runs on solar energy, collected rainwater, and uses a patterned ultraviolet coating on the mirror making it visible to birds while remaining reflective to the human eye.

ÖÖD House
ÖÖD House was founded in 2016 when two brothers, Jaak and Andreas Tiik, wanted to go on a weekend hike and they didn’t want the traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ hotel experience. What they wanted was a small house in a beautiful location, immersed in nature. The older log cabins they found with tiny windows didn’t cut it for the brothers. This realization inspired them to build ÖÖD House — accommodations exactly the way they wanted. ÖÖD Hotels was founded in 2018 by the same brothers to give others the experience of staying in these mirrored cabins.

Sacromonte Landscape Hotel
The boutique Sacromonte Landscape Hotel and winery is set on a 250-acre stretch of sierra between Punta del Este, José Ignacio and Pueblo Garzón in Uruguay’s Maldonado region. There are 13 steel-framed cabins strewn across the vineyards where they sit atop stone bases that double as terraces. Smoked-glass facades reflect the grassland, while stacked logs camouflage the structure at the back. The green roofs make the exterior undetectable even from above.

Réflexion Mirror Houses
The Réflexion Mirror Houses are a pair of reflective cabins located near Canada's Massif de Charlevoix in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François — one of Quebec’s most popular ski resorts. Designed by Lechasseur Architectes, each cabin can hold up to six people and can be rented individually or together.