Inside Outside

This first extensive survey of the work of Petra Blaisse, the internationally known Dutch garden and interior designer, comes at the right time. Blaisse, who has been collaborating with Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture and other major architectural concerns for many years, just finished her largest and best-known project in the U.S., the much-lauded Seattle Public Library's gardens and interior. A "library" of local plant life surrounds the building, and a tiled carpet designed after a garden leads patrons in. Blaisse is passionate about uniting interior and exterior space. She sees them as continuous, and says of her unusual synergy of design roles, that "They are totally different professions, yet they are completely connected: open the window and the garden comes in, the curtain comes out." Her work, situated in the margin between design and architecture, indicates new directions and possibilities for each field. A conversation between Blaisse and curator Kayoko Ota runs throughout Inside Outside, while the balance of the book documents 20 projects ranging from contained interior interventions to larger landscape designs, each described in photography, sketches and drawings.