RE-SET. New wings for architecture. Petra Blaisse in Venice

Although the images are still a bit mysterious, because yet they do not want to reveal the design yet, her ideas are bright, ideas about architecture itself, so that during the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia, a single visit to the Dutch pavilion will not be enough. Anyone who wants to experience the full potential of an empty building will return. Hat tip to Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse!!

Drawings. Dutch pavilion.13th Biennale di Venezia, by Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse. Image courtesy of Inside Outside.

Perhaps more than once. Every five minutes the situation in the pavilion will be totally different, and anyone who stays for a while will witness a visually astounding transformation. With Re-set, new wings for architecture, Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse demonstrates that architecture possesses the power to start anew. The exhibition is being curated by Ole Bouman, Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI).

An untouched tract of land and a substantial budget were for many years the chief preconditions for fine architecture, but the social issues of this day and age demand different points of departure. Taking advantage of existing potential and the creation of value in places where it seems to be vanishing – the ‘reanimation’ of desolate buildings – is increasingly becoming the architect’s core task.

With Re-set, Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse reveals a whole array of possibilities that an existing structure has to offer, taking the given situation as the starting point. With a mobile, tactile intervention, Petra Blaisse gives an impulse to a building that has stood vacant for 40 years – the Dutch Pavilion is in use for just three months of the year – an impulse that still awaits thousands of other Dutch government buildings.

Petra Blaisse: ‘We are not going to hang Objets d’Art, exhibit works or stage events. We are responding to the vacant architecture itself. One single mobile object occupies the space for three months and emphasises the building’s unique qualities. This object will flow through the interior, re-configure its organisation and create new rooms along the way. Through relatively simple interventions the experience of light, sound and space will be manipulated so that new perspectives emerge.’

Re-set as a sequel to Vacant NL
Re-set is the sequel to the Dutch submission to the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in 2010, titled Vacant NL, a presentation by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) and Rietveld Landscape that shed light on the huge amount and enormous potential of disused buildings in the Netherlands. This presentation became a hot topic – in Venice, in the Netherlands, around the world – and one of the many things it spawned is the creation of an MA course on this very subject in the Netherlands.

13th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia
The overarching theme of this edition of the International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia is Common Ground, and its artistic direction is in the hands of David Chipperfield.

The 13th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia runs from 29 August to 25 November 2012.

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Drawing pavilion plan. Dutch pavilion.13th Biennale di Venezia, by Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse. Plan courtesy of Inside Outside.

Diagrams of pavilion plan. Dutch pavilion.13th Biennale di Venezia, by Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse. Diagrams courtesy of Inside Outside.

Drawing. Dutch pavilion.13th Biennale di Venezia, by Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse. Drawing courtesy of Inside Outside.

Ideas. Dutch pavilion.13th Biennale di Venezia, by Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse. Drawing courtesy of Inside Outside.

Ideas. Dutch pavilion.13th Biennale di Venezia, by Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse. Image courtesy of Inside Outside.

Dutch pavilion.13th Biennale di Venezia, by Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse. Image courtesy of Inside Outside.

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More information

PETRA BLAISSE

Petra Blaisse (London 1955), more popularly known in the world of architecture, for her colaboration in some of the most brilliant projects by Rem Koolhaas, as the carpets and finishes for the Seattle Central Library (2000-2004) or finishes and curtains for the Casa da Música in Porto (1999-2005) and acoustic walls, started her career at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in the Department of Applied Arts. It was there that Blaisse first collaborated with Koolhaas. From 1987, she worked as freelance designer and won distinction for her installations of architectural work, in which the exhibited work was challenged more than displayed. Gradually her focus shifted to the use of textiles, light and finishes in interior space and, at the same time, to the design of gardens and landscapes.

In 1991, she founded Inside Outside. Since 1999 Blaisse invited specialist of various disciplines to work with her and currently the team consists of about ten people of different nationalities. Inside Outside works globally on projects of increasing technical sophistication and scale. Throughout the years, Inside Outside has collaborated with various architects and designers. Blaisse has lectured and taught extensively in Europe, Asia and the United States.

In the past years, the opening of a number of public and private buildings in which Inside Outside implemented interior and landscape interventions brought the work of Blaisse’s studio to the attention of a broader public. Examples are the restoration project for the Hackney Empire Theatre in London (all curtains, 2000-2005), the gardens, carpets and finishes for the Seattle Central Library (2000-2004), finishes and curtains for the Casa da Música in Porto (1999-2005) and acoustic walls and curtains for the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart.

For landscape design, the studio presently works, together with OMA Hong Kong and Rotterdam, on the landscape masterplan for the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong and on public gardens (Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Qatar Foundation Headquarters and Education City Library) and on master plans for new urban development areas in Ghadames and Sebha, Libya.

ACT > 01.2019