Moving fabrics, which reveal, envelop, envelop spaces or separate them, impregnated with time and movement, filling and defining spaces, have given sensuality and unconventional alternatives with their mere presence to the architectures in which Inside Outside has intervened, especially from the beginning due to its close collaboration with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Over time, its proposals have expanded and impacted the architecture of other studios, exhibitions and crafts, with a contemporary look.
A journey that explains how static spaces become fluid and achieve the uniqueness and impact of homes such as Villa dall'Ava located in a bourgeois neighbourhood, on a narrow and deep plot, on the side of a hill on the other side of the Seine and directing its gaze to the Eiffel Tower on the façade while its rear façade, the space of glass walls, was protected from the prying eyes of its neighbours with curtains, capable of capturing the light and transferring its golden colour of the sunset. Curtains that defined spaces such as those in the Bordeaux villa, also in France. Metallic textures, with transparent plastic circles, or natural fabrics that envelop and define the functions of an open plan, where its owner moved around in a wheelchair without encountering obstacles.
Re-set, New wings for architecture. Photography by Rob't Hart. Courtesy of Inside-Outside.
A transformation, or definition of the spaces created by Rem Koolhaas, without which many of his architectures would not be understood, such as the carpets and finishes for the Seattle Central Library (2000-2004), the finishes and curtains for the Casa da Música in Porto (1999-2005), or the fabrics for the Rothschild Bank (2012). Petra Blaise's pieces are also architectures, as the Dutchman acknowledged in a lecture now transcribed in this book "...impossible to separate my work from that of Petra Blaise" edited by Fredi Fishli and Niels Olsen.
The book Art Applied tells how Koolhaas met Blaise when she was working at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and how shortly afterwards the opportunity arose to hold an exhibition of the first 10 years of OMA's work (1975) at the Bojimans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The exhibition opened in 1986 with collages made with plastics that explained the works. That exhibition would be the beginning of a fruitful relationship with OMA, which would have its first collaboration in the finishing of the Dance Theatre of The Hague, completed a year later.
Currently, the work of his studio, founded in 1991, is part of projects with others, such as Moussafir Architectes, or with artists and landscapers with whom they propose interventions ranging from Rotterdam to Dubai, and with whom they are creating an extraordinary vademecum that is now shown in this book Art Applied.
Acoustic and view filtering curtain for the lobby, by Petra Blaisse, in Rothschild Bank, by OMA. Photograph by H. Werlemann, courtesy of Inside Outside.
Petra Blaisse's diverse methods and distinctive forms of expression are reflected in the book, whose language spans caricatured production manuals, technical drawings, collage, photography and scientific plant studies, across nearly 900 pages. Her interventions challenge conventional interpretations of space through constant dynamism, working across different fields and ranging from large urban landscapes to intimate domestic spaces defined by soft, fluid textile walls.
Curtains have been active and absent protagonists in modern architecture, recognisable from the early twentieth century, as was Mies van der Rohe's relationship with Lilly Reich, in numerous works such as the Barcelona Pavilion, and in turn, as they influenced artists such as Narelle Jubellin. Art Applied suggests countless means of intervention and habitation, encouraging us to strive tirelessly for new ways of seeing our built environment.
