I had a great professor at RPI named Ken Warriner (R.I.P. Ken) who in design studios was a nut about ambiguous spaces. He would push us to design spaces that could function in different ways with different occupants at different times of the day, spaces that could be one thing at one time, and something completely different at others. One of his first year studio tasks was to work on spaces that were both inside and outside simultaneuosly.
Nana Wall in residential application
In most climates, that inside/outside line is pretty easy to find because there is a plane of glass keeping the heat or a/c inside. But on those days where the temperature is just right, here is a product that definitely helps blur that line of inside and out… disappearing walls! A company called Nana Wall has large sliding window/door systems that can really open up your indoor space to become more of a covered outdoor space.
I had the opportunity to work on a commercial project that used the Nana Wall system as a retail storefront enclosure and it has been very successful. I’ve also suggested it to a few residential clients, but the cost of the necessary support structure over such a wide expanse of open space makes it a little impractical for renovation work. This picture from their marketing brochure is a great example of how the indoors and outdoors can really begin to flow together with enormous opening between the two.