Reinventing architecture with fabric

Dutch artist and designer Petra Blaisse believes in “the reanimation of desolate buildings,” and her latest “intervention” at the 13th 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.”