4 The Lemoîne home essentially consists of three houses piled on top of one another. One sinks into the ground; the second is almost immaterial and light, entirely glazed, opening out to wide views over the forest, across the Garonne and onto the old towers of Bordeaux; a third encapsulates the private sleeping quarters and bathrooms with a concrete wall, punctuated with small portholes, merging an atmosphere of immersion and shelter with a sensation of permeability. The wall becomes a rather textile-like coating of the house, a sponge that allows the surrounding world to infiltrate the building gently.
5 In the central, lightest and almost entirely glazed structure, Petra Blaisse adds white, lightweight curtains and a grey, net-like membrane. They do not merely form a filter in front of the glass, but can also be drawn outside to encircle the spacious terrace, where the massive concrete slab overhead balances heavily on a mirror-clad column. The effect is amazing: a room comes into being, its textile walls constantly changing shape in the wind. The walls swell and curve, blowing close to those who sit around. Under its rock-like, concrete ceiling, the house performs an improbably light "dance of the curtain walls" that seems to defy statics: the heaviest component appears to rest on the lightest, melting into thin air the notionally unalterable laws of statics that once tormented the disabled inhabitant.