An Architecture Of Reuse, Built With Iridescent Curtains

The social issues of today has changed the course of architecture. Once “good” architecture created  from untouched sites and endless budgets; now, the trend is shifting more towards affordable and sustainable alternatives, such as adaptive reuse.

At  this year’s  Venice Architecture Biennale, the Netherland Petra Blaisse  and her team have filled their space with a series of shimmering pink and silver curtains, hung on motorized frames that divide the expansive galleries into smaller spaces.

The Dutch  pavilion’s interior changes every five minutes–accompanied by a soft whirr, transforming  the 1954 vacant building of the  pavilion throughout the entire length of the Biennale.

 “We are not hanging Objets d’Art, exhibit works or stage events,” says Petra Blaisse, the textile designer and frequent Rem Koolhaas-collaborator behind Re-set. “We are responding to the vacant architecture itself.”

Rather than stage an exhibition, like most other countries at the Biennale, Blaisse with the swishing of fabric–demonstrated how relatively low-cost, low-impact architectural interventions can re-animate abandoned spaces.

Re-set is the sequel to the Dutch submission to the International Architecture Exhibition in 2010, titled Vacant NL, a presentation by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) and Rietveld Landscape that shed light on the huge amount and enormous potential of disused buildings in the Netherlands.