A stunning temporary art installation featuring translucent organza curtains has transformed a historic Renaissance courtyard in Tortosa, Spain. The project, titled "Umbrales de Ensueño" (Thresholds of Dreams), was created by ELSE Design in collaboration with Luis Medina as part of the 2025 edition of the A Cel Obert festival, which activates the city's heritage architecture through temporary interventions.
The installation is located within the Patio de Sant Jordi i Sant Domènec, part of the historic Reials Collegis complex. The project directly engages with the courtyard's Renaissance geometry, which is defined by a three-tier sequence of arcades. These arches, varying in scale and proportion, create a spatial rhythm that articulates both structure and light throughout the historic space.
The artistic 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, with some openings large enough for visitors to walk through, while others frame smaller visual openings. The arches are not built but subtracted from the fabric, allowing voids to define spatial perception and transform the Renaissance motif of the arch into a porous, temporary threshold.
Movement and environmental conditions play an integral role in the installation's behavior and visual impact. Air currents and changes in sunlight continuously alter the fabric's form and visual quality throughout the day. As wind passes through the courtyard, the material shifts and folds, softening the boundaries between physical and perceptual space. The translucent organza reacts dynamically to daylight, moving from near transparency to reflective opacity, creating gradients of light and shadow that change continuously.
The project establishes a compelling dialogue between permanence and temporality, contrasting the heavy stone of the historic courtyard with the weightless textile suspended within it. The overlapping curtains generate layered sightlines, where reflections, silhouettes, and shadows form a secondary architecture inside the original Renaissance structure. Visitors moving through the space encounter shifting visual alignments as the installation mediates between architecture, light, and air.
Spanning the entire courtyard, the curtains form a distinctive radial pattern, gathering in one corner and releasing toward the other, creating dynamic visual perspectives from multiple viewpoints. By abstracting the structural logic of the arch into a field of suspended voids, the installation investigates the relationship between materiality and perception, positioning itself between architecture and installation art while using minimal means to explore how spatial memory and environmental factors can redefine historical context through contemporary temporary design.
