Design Map · Eindhoven
Mirrorverse Restaurant
Graduation project by Jaeyoung Lee at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
While studying in Eindhoven, Jaeyoung Lee noticed that Chinese, Japanese and Korean elements were frequently combined in restaurants into a generic vision of ‘Asia’, detached from their original contexts. Drawing on her earlier career as a hospitality designer in South Korea, she repurposed restaurant-design methods to examine how these spaces mediate relationships with those perceived as ‘Other’, often replacing encounter with consumption. ‘Mirrorverse Restaurant’ takes the form of a folding screen representing a restaurant façade. Across its front and back, women in traditional dress show an idealised Asia for consumption. Opening a door reveals an interior where mirrors intertwined with fragmented sculptural elements redirect the viewer’s gaze towards themselves. By repurposing fragmentation and selective enlargement — the methods through which restaurants construct a Western fantasy of ‘the East’ — the installation turns the Western gaze back on itself and unsettles the centre-periphery hierarchy that sustains it.