Reinventing architecture with fabric “interventions”

Published On: December 1, 2012

Dutch artist and designer Petra Blaisse believes in “the reanimation of desolate buildings,” and her latest “intervention” at the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, Italy, uses daylight, shadow and space-transforming curtains to bring a vacant exhibit space new life. Blaisse founded Inside Outside, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, a design studio that specializes in textiles, light and finishes for interior space and gardens and landscapes for exterior space. The Dutch Pavilion in Venice, designed by Gerrit Reitveld and vacant for more than 40 years of its 58-year lifespan, became the site of a Blaisse intervention—one single mobile object, a curtain that flows through the space and reconfigures itself every five minutes.

“Re-Set: New wings for architecture” brings attention and interest to the building’s unique qualities “through relatively simple interventions,” says Blaisse, “The experience of light, sound and space will be manipulated so that new perspectives emerge.” Re-Set is the sequel to a previous project, titled “Vacant NL,” that worked to shed light on the potential of unused buildings in the Netherlands. “We are not going to hang objets d’art, exhibit works or stage events,” says Blaisse. “We are responding to the vacant architecture itself.”

Inside Outside services include advice on architecture, interiors, acoustics and urban master-planning; consultation on environmental, ecological and urban issues from a design perspective; and product design of wallpapers, tiles, carpets and other objects that bring life to public spaces.