Inside Outside

BOOKS BOOKS INSIDE OUTSIDE Petra Blaisse known for her long collaboration with these words into a picture essay specifically with OMA she has worked of textures, thoughts, flowers and with UN Studio, SANAA/Kazuyo colours, and the first page throws back Sejima, Macken & Macken, Michael like one of Blaiss’s curtains. It is an Maltzan, Tim Ronalds and Jean Novel appropriate way to begin our discovery to name a few. of the projects, the dilemmas, ideas, personalities and locations that make This new extensive book is long up Blaisse’s world. overdue, and shows the full range of Petra Blaisse’s work for the first time. When you see her work, you realize The words are all mainly by Blaisse the implicit difficulty in representing it herself with short essays and in book form. The hand needs to thoughts by Chris Dercon, Tim touch; light fall through the material Ronalds, Cecil Balmond, Sanford and trees move in the wind. But the Kwinter and others. Irma Boom’s subtle balance between word, image hand as the designer of the book is and sequence is carefully interlaced in In the opening sequences of the film unmistakable. She creates a rich the design of the book, to hint at the dialogue and empathy with Blaisse’s crafted materiality and evolution of L Ratcatcher by Lynne Ramsay we stunning though it is- but a mixture revisiting years after completion -not In the architecture and design world, work and approach in both how the her designs. watch the central character (James) of diary, photo album and scrapbook in the project as such but in the reality we tend to get obsessed with book has been graphically conceived wrap himself in a curtain and spin that tells her own story of how she of the prison situation. The project intellectual reasoning and aesthetics, and physically produced. Images of her Amsterdam studio round and round, gazing at us from works and what she creates. itself a sort of wild ivy of paths and and we become total control appear throughout the book, full of within his lace web. It is a magical gardens that grows free against the freaks…but if you step back and An open introduction begins on the colourful samples, textures, models, and transformative moment when Most architects will be familiar with institutional plan. Its materials: white forget about your so-called this small boy conjures away the cover and appears as stitched words images and people. This is not a book L the ‘sound curtain’ at the Kunsthal in shells, blue mussels, fragrant shrubs, ‘originality’, it could be just as into the fabric of the book. We are led about theorizing polished product - difficult realities that surround him Rotterdam: a huge spatial robe that broken terracotta surfaces and trees, fascinating to accomplish something with this simple act. It awakens in us has a field of small speakers stitched all call from the beauty of the world that goes against your basic, our own memory of that wonderful into the fabric. But the curtain for the beyond the high fences. ingrained instincts.” same encounter with a curtain: those Hackney Empire, The park for the long swathes of fabric that separate Giardini di Porta Nuova in Milan, the Each project reveals her immersion in The zoomed in shots of the test day and night and temporarily map landscaping and interiors for the different contexts and programmes curtains for the Toledo Glass pavilion the contours of our childhood Seattle Library and the vast net like and shows her ability to create reveal her interest in new materials, imagination. swathes for the Casa da Musica in extraordinary things from the ordinary processes and techniques. They Porto, are all shown in considerable -that are particular to each culture demonstrate also a careful The work of Petra Blaisse is associated detail for the first time. and situation. architectural play with light and with the creation of some of the most transparency, while these curtains extraordinary curtains that have been At Hackney her work with Tim Pictures of butterfly gardens, shadow also act as ‘eco membranes’ in an designed in the last few years. She has Ronalds -a long and persistent patterns, water islands for Dubai, almost biological way with the restored and awakened a deep sense of engagement (6 years) battling with reflections on glass, floors being building skin, climate and space. pleasure and purpose to the art of the costs, timescales and clients resistant poured, fabrics and people making curtain and given it a definitive role in to change- placed demands on her and shaping, provide a visual Be it a small sun curtain for a well contemporary architecture. But her that she describes as: “ Don’t even kaleidoscope in parallel with her known bookshop in Amsterdam, work is about much more than just this, ask how often we secretly wanted to words. There are drawings, images installations for the Venice Biennale and she is known also for her landscape give up…and how happy we were and descriptions that cover each or the vast interior spaces of the work, interiors and exhibition designs. that we didn’t…a never ending story project in detail, but it is Blaisse’s Seattle library, Petra Blaisse’s work Her aptly named atelier, ‘Inside Outside’ about diplomacy, calculation, logic, words which reveal so much more: “ reveals a childlike pleasure in captures the wide panorama and range labour, patience and modesty.” But as discovering the riches of our natural of her abilities. with most projects, while the labour and material world: touch, colour, pains are difficult, the results pattern and above all her dialogue Numerous magazine articles and a astonishing. Her curtain at Hackney a with the garden as metaphor. small and beautiful book (also rich red pleated curtain that forms a designed by Irma Boom) called sort of 3D smock, which she says she This is an inspiring book that is ‘Movements 25%’ was all that was imagined in a dream. absorbing and densely visual. As with available to illustrate her work up to her curtains you just want to wrap now. Showing mainly work in At the State Detention Centre in yourself up in it, and imagine what is progress ‘Movements 25%’ revealed Nieuwegein in the Netherlands, she possible. a wonderful playfulness of ideas that has created an abstract series of Paul Clarke gave a snapshot of what was to come. spaces and gardens to allow exercise and a sense of humanity for a difficult Inside Outside Her work has often gone relatively and overpowering institution. In the Petra Blaisse unrecognized amidst the array of text she records here dismay at the Edited by Kayoko Ota famous architects and collaborators NAI Publishers Hb pp 504 €42 changes she has witnessed in www.naipublishers.nl that she has worked with. While 92 PE RSPE CTIVE PE RSPE CTIVE 93.

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