Artist Talk: Petra Blaisse

Join Dutch designer Petra Blaisse of Inside Outside, Amsterdam, in a discussion of her work and approach to the Walker Art Center’s new Wurtele Upper Garden. Learn how Blaisse and her team transformed a sloping open field into an iconic hillside. A series of tree groves—some open, some enclosed—are arrayed across the new topography, offering views of the downtown skyline and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and providing new spaces to host Walker programs. Cohosted by Architecture MN magazine and its publisher, AIA Minnesota. About the Artist Petra Blaisse works in a multitude of creative areas, including textile, landscape, and exhibition design. Blaisse gained international acclaim for her innovative exhibition installations in the 1980s and 1990s. Her studio Inside Outside, which she founded in 1991, specializes in the rare combination of interior and landscape design, interweaving architecture and context and reflecting a fascination with materials, light, and movement within an urban and infrastructural program. The Amsterdam-based studio works globally on projects of increasing technical sophistication, ambition, and scale, including public parks, large-scale curtains and gardens for cultural and commercial buildings, landscape master plans, and small built structures. Throughout the years Inside Outside has collaborated with various architects and designers, including OMA, SANAA, UNStudio, Youssef Tohme Architects and Associates (YTAA), Location & Vassal, and others. Blaisse has lectured and taught extensively in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States, and her award-winning work has been featured in numerous design and architecture publications and exhibits internationally.