Think tough and resilient, for example, rather than fragile. "Lace in Translation," the new exhibition at the Design Center at Philadelphia University, shows off no less than a chain-link fence, an oil tank, a lawn, and a hammock, all set free from their conventional selves.

The other, more subtle surprise of this show, however, is the light it shines on the Design Center's collection of historic textiles. By asking the show's participants - the design studio Demakersvan, the artist Cal Lane, and the designer Tord Boontje - to create works in response to lace samples and designs made by the late Quaker Lace Co. of Philadelphia, which are in the Design Center's collection, the show's curators have revealed the leaps of imagination taken in each contemporary art or design work, while also making the exhibition uniquely relevant to its venue and to Philadelphia's fabled manufacturing past.

The chain-link fence is the first lace-inspired work you see as you enter the driveway from Henry Avenue to the Design Center's Goldie Paley House. Designed by Demakersvan, the Rotterdam-based team of Jeroen Johan Verhoeven, Joep Verhoeven, and Judith de Graauw, Lace Fence (2009) borrows its sinuous botanical motif from an early-20th-century lace sample produced by Quaker Lace (on view indoors, along with other relevant samples and designs). Made of galvanized wire coated with white PVC, it looks like floating rectangular banners of lace against its woodsy Wissahickon backdrop and as if it were designed to complement the white modernist house (it wasn't).

Except for the samples of lace and drawings and designs by the Quaker Lace designer Frederick Charles Vessey (also in the Design Center's collection) on display in the foyer, the house's three galleries have been given over to the works of Tord Boontje, a Dutch furniture and industrial designer, who lives and works in France.

The first gallery, painted entirely black for the occasion, features an installation of Boontje's startling black hammock-like Sofa (2009) in the center of the room, flanked by vintage black-lace dresses from the collection that inspired him. It's a sofa that Morticia Addams would have loved, and it looks as though it was spun by a spider.

Boontje's pieces in the two other galleries include a selection of his humorous raffia lamps (African witch doctors and Tiki bar roofs come to mind), a floral-patterned raffia curtain - assembled last spring by Philadelphia University students and faculty and the Design Center staff according to Boontje's directions - a raffia dress and hairpiece, and raffia jewelry.

Like Demakersvan's fence, the Canadian sculptor Cal Lane's two outdoor works, in the Paley House's backyard, were inspired by an early-20th-century Quaker Lace sample. One piece is a vastly enlarged lace pattern that Lane has burned into the lawn, the other a salvaged oil tank into which she cut lace patterns with an acetylene torch.

The oil tank, now transformed into something akin to a giant piece of ajouré jewelry, is the more successful of Lane's two works; the tidy little crescent of lawn is too small for her burned pattern and makes it seem cramped.

"Lace in Translation" boasts a remarkable Web site that explains every aspect of the exhibition in depth - from the artist's and designers' bios, to a video showing the works being installed at the Design Center, to the long and distinguished history of the Quaker Lace Co. of Philadelphia - and also invites lace-inspired artists to submit images of their works for posting.

to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. 215-951-2860 or www.laceintranslation.com. Through April 3, 2010.