6 An intrinsic aesthetic of the impossible moulds the house, and this same inspiring tactic is echoed and pursued in Petra Blaisse's textile installation. The trompe l'oeil effect of a light cloth is heightened by the fact that the fabric, which actually covers the glass, itself contains a circular plastic window in which the view to the forest appears as a picture, like the darkness of the sea seen through the porthole of a cosy ship's cabin.
In another room, square reinforcements carried by the light gauze of the curtain come to a halt in front of the concrete wall's portholes. When closed, the square patches appear as back-lit abstract sculptures. The curtain, formerly a twodimensional layer, gains depth; the former plane of the curtain wall deepens into a space.
7 Just as an architect uses a pencil to sketch a floor plan, one can create an ephemeral room by drawing a very long, light curtain along the ceiling, through the open space of the loggia. In this large expanse in the Bordeaux villa, exterior space can be turned into an interior room with one simple, easy gesture that changes, in an act of delicate spatiophagie, outside to inside, like the shoreline and the sea — a phenomenon reflected in the name of Petra Blaisse's studio, Inside Outside. This room is temporary, like a tent, constructed with quiet gestures. It is an inside space from which the outside is visually excluded, but in which wind, moisture, heat and cold can be felt. The outside is still present and, while screened from sight, highlighted even more as a sensual experience. Again, Petra Blaisse's work echoes and alters an idea of permeability inherent in Rem Koolhaas's architecture for a disabled inhabitant.
Anyone who enters becomes the object of a mysterious act, where spatial drifts allow new encounters