Daily Archives: March 10, 2024

Tuesday, March 19, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Art Applied, Inside Outside

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You are invited to the Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts on March 19 at 6:30 with Petra Blaisse, in conversation with Grace La, Niels Olsen, and Fredi Fischli, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design Gund Hall Piper Auditorium in Cambridge. Free. Designer Petra Blaisse discusses her forthcoming publication Art Applied, Inside Outside(2024), a kaleidoscopic view of her work across interior, exhibition, and landscape design over three decades. This comprehensive survey encompasses renowned projects, including the recently completed Taipei Performing Arts Center; the Kunsthal Rotterdam; Biblioteca degli Alberi in Milan, a park spanning almost ten hectares; and LocHal Library in Tilburg, a vast factory repurposed using an architecture of semitranslucent curtains. Joining the conversation are the GSD’s Grace La, Chair of the Department of Architecture; Niels Olsen, John Portman Design Critic in Architecture; and Fredi Fischli, John Portman Design Critic in Architecture.

Petra Blaisse, Inside Outside’s lead designer, works in a multitude of creative areas including interior design, landscape architecture, exhibition and textile design. After an education in the visual arts and work for commercial photographers and filmers she became assistant curator at the Applied Arts department of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1986 she became free-lance exhibition designer.

While realizing a series of experimental installations and exhibitions with the Rotterdamse Kunststichting (1988) and OMA (1987-1992), Blaisse’s assignments extended to the architectural field, where her focus on interior interventions (material, colour, light) and large-scale curtains developed, parallel to her life-long passion for gardening. After a two-year period of practical schooling in the early 90’s to gain botanical knowledge, Blaisse decided to add garden design to her practice.

Since 2016 Inside Outside is led by Blaisse and partners Aura Luz Melis (architect) and Jana Crepon (landscape architect) in collaboration with long-time colleague Peter Niessen (fashion designer). The studio specializes in the creation of dynamic, ever-changing environments of various levels of complexity, both inside and outside.

For more information visit www.gsd.harvard.edu

Thursday, March 28, 7:00 pm – The Larger Landscape Conversation: Queering Public Spaces

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Join architects Joel Sanders, Sami Meylnas Sikanas, and activist Kimm Topping at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 28 at 7 pm as they discuss how inclusive design and the crafting of accessible public spaces embrace diverse gender and sexual identities in a conversation that redefines urban design beyond heteronormative boundaries.

The public realm has been historically conceived, constructed, and construed as heteronormative. The architectural and urban typologies of bathrooms, sports fields, and campuses have spatially reinforced strict gender binaries and prohibitions of various sexualities. More recently, the contemporary city has seen a growing discourse on design beyond its heteronormative origins. Queering Public Spaces convenes conversation on the role of design and planning in the curation of public spaces and landscapes that are accessible and welcoming to all, across the dynamic and vast spectrum of sexual and gender identities and lived experiences. The Larger Landscape Conversation is hosted by Gardner Museum Ruettgers Curator of Landscape and Harvard GSD Professor of Landscape Architecture Charles Waldheim.

Advanced tickets are required and include Museum admission. Adults $20, seniors $18, students $13, free for members and children 17 and under.  Seating in Calderwood Hall is first come, first served. Seating begins 45 minutes before the event. Late seating is not guaranteed. To request accessible or wheelchair seating please call the box office at 617 278 5156. Register at https://www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/larger-landscape-conversation-queering-public-spaces