Petra Blaisse

Hear from renowned Dutch designer Petra Blaisse at the third annual Glimcher Lecture. This program is presented with support from the DeeDee and Herb Glimcher Program Fund, which supports an annual lecture by a distinguished speaker in the fields of art and architecture. Petra Blaisse works in a multitude of creative areas, including textile, landscape, and exhibition design. In 1991 she founded the Amsterdam-based design studio Inside Outside, which specializes in the rare combination of interior and exterior design, interweaving architecture and landscape.

Blaisse first gained international acclaim for her exhibition installations, theater curtains, acoustic walls, and poured floors. Her signature touches involve exotic uses of material in architectural spaces, seen to dramatic effect with her embossed "liquid gold" drapes for the Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague and knitted curtain walls for the Rem Koolhaas–designed Prada store in New York.

Other notable recent projects include her theater curtain for the Hackney Empire Theater in London and curtain wall and sun screen for the Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal, another collaboration with Koolhaas. Blaisse has received recognition as a landscape designer for her work on Museumpark Rotterdam and won first prize for her sloping "structure gardens" created for the Downsview Park competition in Toronto. Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, including Skin at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in Summer 2002.