"Located within the historic Reials Collegis complex in Tortosa, , Umbrales de Ensueño ephemeral fabric installation by ELSE Design in collaboration with Luis Medina, was part of the 2025 edition of A Cel Obert. The festival activates the city's heritage architecture through interventions. Installed in the Patio de Sant Jordi i Sant Domènec, the project engages directly with the courtyard's Renaissance geometry, defined by a three-tier sequence of arcades."
"The intervention consists of multiple translucent organza curtains suspended across the courtyard in a radial configuration. Each fabric sheet features arch-shaped cutouts at different scales, some large enough to walk through, others framing smaller visual openings. The arches are not built but subtracted, allowing voids to define spatial perception. Through this operation, Umbrales de Ensueño transforms the Renaissance motif of the arch into a porous, temporary threshold."
"Movement and environmental conditions are integral to the installation's behavior. Air currents and changes in sunlight continuously alter the fabric's form and visual quality. As wind passes through, the material shifts and folds, softening the boundaries between physical and perceptual space. The translucent organza reacts to daylight, moving from near transparency to reflective opacity, creating gradients of light and shadow that change throughout the day. The project establishes a dialogue between permanence and temporality, between the heavy sto"
Umbrales de Ensueño installs translucent organza curtains across the Patio de Sant Jordi i Sant Domènec within the Reials Collegis complex in Tortosa. The radial arrangement of suspended fabric echoes the courtyard's Renaissance three-tier arcade geometry while remaining non-structural and lightweight. Arch-shaped cutouts are subtracted from each sheet at varying scales to create walkable openings and framed views, transforming the arch motif into porous, temporary thresholds. Air currents and shifting sunlight continuously alter the curtains' form and translucency, producing gradients of light and shadow and softening boundaries between physical and perceptual space. The installation mediates dialogue between permanence and temporality through material lightness and ephemeral spatial redefinition.
Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine
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