Inside Outside – Petra Blaisse

by Kayoko Ota (Editor), Gaston Bekkers, Cecil Balmond

Petra Blaisse is a brilliant Dutch interior designer and landscape architect who champions an ambitious new role for landscape architecture and interior design. Her designs call the rigor and rigidity of architectural form into question with solutions that are variable and fluid both outside and in. Her talent is transforming ideas into overpowering sensory experiences. This book presents the entire spectrum of her work for the first time. It includes extensive documentation of her most important projects, including the Public Library in Seattle, the Hackney Empire Theatre in London, the Mick Jagger Centre in Dartford, and the Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague. It also includes an interview between the editor, Kayoko Ota, and Petra Blaisse as well as illuminating essays by noted authors in the field. This book is an inspiration for architects, interior designers, landscape architects, and planners of all kinds. It is full of stimulating new directions for the field.

Genres: Architecture

502 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[Wei Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Petra Blaisse's work, it is so beautiful and sensorial and tactile. Her use of fabric is inventive in so many ways and she really pushes the limits of fabric and color. I just love the way she uses fabric to create space, be it to trigger spatial effects through structure, scale, light, weight, movement, rhythm, density, texture, color, etc. There is something about her curtains (which transcends curtains) that make it magical and beautiful. She uses a variety of material and construction methods (stitching, knotting, knitting, pleating, etc.) that renders a space completely different. Being in the presence of one of her curtains/projects is a complete sensory experience. She is interested in ways that fabric change space, they are not merely decorations but they are filters and acoustics and walls.

The book was perfect! It detailed her work with illustrations and descriptions that shed a new light into not only the design process but the technical, negotiation, bureaucratic, economic, and political aspect of it. It is nice to see the "inner" world of architecture and design and how different people (owners, developers, architects, landscape people, engineers, Inside Outside, etc.) came together and negotiated and collaborated. Petra's voice is heard all over the book and it is a very inspiring, positive, and encouraging voice.

I would recommend this book to everyone. It is easy to read, full of beautiful images of her projects and diagrams. Very clever and inventive way to design and "make" curtains!