Short Biography

Dutch designer Petra Blaisse works in a multitude of creative areas, including textile, landscape and exhibition design. She founded Inside Outside in in 1991.

Inside Outside specializes in the rare combination of both interior and exterior design, interweaving architecture and landscape. These interior projects are not only visual interventions that are made of materials that change their architectural context and introduce color, flexibility and movement, but they also function to solve acoustic, climatic, shading and spatial necessities. The landscape projects reflect the same fascination with – and a continuous research of - materials, light and movement combined with urban and infrastructural program. This mentality brings forth a series of strong, multi-layered garden and park designs that combine logistics with rich planting schemes and graphic effects.

Blaisse first gained international acclaim for her exhibition installations, theatre curtains, acoustic walls and poured floors. The traveling exhibits on OMA’s work in the eighties and nineties; the embossed ‘liquid gold’ drapes for the Dance Theatre in ; the ‘sound curtain’ for the in ; back lit curtains and poured floors for Lille Grand Palais; the multi-layered curtain walls for the Mick Jagger Centre concert hall in ; the ‘Garden Carpets’ and reversible curtains for the Central Library; the pleated and knitted curtains for the PRADA stores in New York and Los Angeles; and the large flowered ‘jacquard’ curtains for the Dutch Embassy in Berlin are a few of Blaisse’s most recognised works.

The combined landscape and interior design for the McGormick Tribune Campus Building in Chicago and (2000-2004) (both by architects OMA) recently brought Blaisse’s work to the attention of a broader public.

In the landscape field recognition first began during the co-design for the Rotterdam (92) with Yves Brunier (France). The ‘Connective Landscape’ for an area in the city of Seoul (97) (architects Jean Nouvel, Mario Botta, Terry Farrel and OMA); her design for State Prison gardens in Utrecht (99), the first-prize winning Downsview Park competition in Toronto (00) (with Bruce Mau, , Oleson Woreland Architects and others) and the semi-private gardens for a housing project in Breda (Xaveer de Geyter Architects, Belgium) are some of the most widely published works.

Last year Inside Outside, together with partners Mirko Zardini, Michael Maltzan, , Piet Oudolf and Ro’dor Landscape Engineers won 1st prize for the ‘Giardini di Porta Nuova’ landscape competition – a new urban park for the centre of Milan, which the team re-named ‘Biblioteca degli alberi’.

Current projects include several competitions, among others an art installation for Villa Manin, italy (opening June 8th 2005); the Nuovo Palazzo del Cinema e Aree Limitrofe in Venice with Stefano Boeri Architects Milan. Research and design for a series of shading curtains for the Toledo Glass Centre in Ohio (with Japanese architects Sejima and Nishizawa); the hands-on production of small hotel-curtains for a Toyo Ito building in Groningen; the installation of eleven curtains in the Casa da Musica in Porto (OMA); designs for the landscape around the CCTV and TVCC buildings in Beijing (OMA); the installation of the last curtains in the Hackney Empire Theatre in London (Tim Ronalds Architects); coordinating the execution of the Almere “Swamp Garden” (city planners OMA) and the inner garden of the Plussenburgh Housing Complex, Rotterdam (Arons en Gelauff Architecten) and the making of a on her own work (with graphic designer Irma Boom and Japanese editor Kayoko Ota) are some of the projects that keep Blaisse and her small Inside Outside team quite busy.

In 2000, Blaisse had a solo exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture gallery in New York, for which Dutch graphic designer Irma Boom designed the small but precious ‘Movements’ catalogue. Her research interweaving landscape and architecture has been presented as part of several exhibitions, including the “Skin” exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt in Summer 2002; the Schatten/Shadows installation in the Deutsches Architektur Museum in Frankfurt; the Hammer Museum building- graphic- and garden design exhibit at the MOCA in Los Angeles (with Michael Maltzan and Bruce Mau); and recently at UCLA’s Perloff Hall Gallery in Los Angeles. In her lectures in Europe, Asia and the United States this subject is illustrated through her work and studies.

Blaisse has taught at the Berlage Institute and The Academie voor Bouwkunst in Amsterdam, The Academy for Fine Arts in Rotterdam , at the Architectural Institute in Gent, Belgium and at UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design in Los Angeles. She has lectured at Harvard University, Technical University Delft, Cornell University, Academie voor Bouwkunst Amsterdam, NAi in Rotterdam and UCLA in Los Angeles; at the Architecture and New Media festival “Ultraskin” in Ljubljana, and at the “Aspects of Landscape” conference in Tenerife. At the City and Architecture Foundation in Leuven, at OTIS College of Art and Design of Los Angeles, the Architecture League in New York and at the University of Texas School of Architecture in Austin. Also lectures were given, in 2004, at the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago; for Lotus Magazine in Milan, at UCLA in Los Angeles and at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.