peepSHOW

This dimensional installation takes the form of a 10-by-20-foot undulating tunnel. Custom fabricated from high-polish stainless steel, the object is effectively mirrored inside and out, refracting both exterior and interior views. Strategically angled panels present unexpected reflections and calculated portals frame vistas, both serving to alter the relationship of viewers with the environment, with themselves, and with each other.

peepSHOW in the City

peepSHOW began as an urban experiment, an entry in the first Market Street Prototyping Festival in 2015, which sought to activate San Francisco's major transit corridor.

Fashioned from wood and mirrored tiles, the first iteration of this structure was fabricated and then assembled overnight on-site by the DBA_Lab team. Over the course of the three-day festival, peepSHOW proved itself to be an object of intrigue and beauty, a catalyst for cooperation and conversation, a place to pause and ponder, a cultural cross-section-izer, a giant selfie machine—and more. The structure builds on the notion of a nature-lover’s viewing station (birding platform, scenic overlook) but centers this action in a dense city context, allowing for the contemplation of the urban environment.

Following the festival, it was one of 10 projects selected for a prototype incubator program, with the goal of further developing the concept for semi-permanent installation, for up to two years on Market Street.

Inside at Chrome Cavern

After the festival, this version was temporarily deployed for an interior assembly as part of the Chrome Cavern installation inside StoreFrontLab, an art and culture gallery in San Francisco’s Mission District that explores the notion of the storefront as a community space.

peepSHOW 2.0: New and Improved

In collaboration with the Market Street Prototyping team, The City of San Francisco, YBCA, Gray Area Foundation, and Autodesk we became a part of the Urban Prototyping Research Lab, a 6-month iterative research-and-development program to create peepSHOW 2.0. 

A second iteration transitioned the structure to a steel panel system crafted from 110 unique parametric boxes held together with stainless steel fasteners. peepSHOW 2.0 re-appeared on Market Street in its new guise in 2016, picking up the festival’s People’s Choice Award.  

peepSHOW’s Final Installation in the Desert

In the Spring of 2023, the DBA_Lab team traveled to New Cuyama in Santa Barbara County to install peepSHOW 2.0 in its last temporary installation at Blue Sky Center—a place-based organization that celebrates the abundance of the Cuyama Valley (This installation ended in late 2023).

Although originally conceptualized as an urban viewing station, the peepSHOW experience worked equally well in the expansive Central California landscape, creating a dialog between visitors and the rural setting. On its high-desert site, peepSHOW provided shelter and instigated a constant evolution of perspective within a series of still frames, making a kaleidoscope of unexpected views from the spectacular open setting.

Whatever its site—urban, indoors, or rural nature—it welcomes visitors and offers them a new way of looking at things. Each visitor has their own experience: While a group or pair can enter together, they will share a moment in time only—each person’s experience inside and outside is perfectly unique and cannot be recreated or conveyed.