"you mirrors, who keep on emptying the empty rooms"
(R.M. Rilke)

Prismatic Space derives both from a modernist notion of gradual transparencies and from the contemporary dystopia of 'white space' parole.aporee.org. Walls are no longer dividing lines in a game of figure and ground. Rather, their qualities are in the depth of the material and of their simultaneous layers. On either side of these walls, sounds and images are fractured, absorbed and reflected.

In the Prismatic House there are small spaces in which to read and sleep; corners in which to work, large open spaces in which thoughts can float. The Prismatic House is enclosed with a folded glass wall; all these spaces unfold from a surface that fractures the views across the interior. Through multiple reflections, the glass constructs an ambiguity of position and context, prismatic effects of simultaneous interior and exterior views. The dialogue of aural space and visual space, as well as the interferences produced from them, has driven the materialization of this project. The scenery from outside as well as the sounds from adjacent spaces are filtered through the edges of the many sheets of glass.

Project credits: Diaphanarch, Sabine von Fischer, 2003