Dutch studio AMO emphasised the "paradoxical dichotomy" between office interiors and the natural world for the Prada Autumn Winter 2024 menswear show, which featured a plexiglass runway above grass and streams.

AMO, the research and creative studio of architecture office OMA, created the scenography for the 14 January show at the Rem Koolhaas-designed Fondazione Prada during Milan Fashion Week.

The arts centre's Deposito space was covered with forest-like swathes of real grass interspersed with rocks, pebbles, leaves and running water to emulate natural streams.

In stark contrast, AMO constructed a clear plexiglass runway mounted onto a gridded structure that was positioned above the unmanicured grass.

"The studio created a set design juxtaposing an office interior with a natural landscape," said Prada, which is headquartered in Milan.

Uniform rows of familiar black swivel chairs snaked across the geometric runway, providing seating for the guests and creating pathways for the models.

Embedded in the ceiling, office-style strip lighting was reflected across the plexiglass in rigid patterns, while mist was released into the space for an atmospheric effect.

On the edges of the set, AMO installed walls formed from recognisably corporate blue panels, often found in office environments.

One section, where guests entered the runway, featured whole booths created with the panels, complete with large desks, swivel chairs and desktop computers emblazoned with the Prada logo on their otherwise blank screens.

Presented by the fashion house's co-creative directors, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, the show's looks echoed the contrasting scenography.

Classic suit-and-tie pairings finished in neutral textiles were combined with more vibrant pieces such as swimming caps and goggle-like sunglasses crafted as a nod to the outdoors.

"This collection is about something basic – the emotional instinct to remain attached to something we know, the cycles of nature," said Prada.

"There is a simple assertion, of a deep and essential human need to connect with the world around us," continued the brand.

"Demonstrating the paradoxical dichotomy between two coexisting worlds [offices and nature], this show explores fundamental truths of humanity, our natural instincts and our emotional needs."

Longtime-collaborators AMO and Prada have been creating catwalks together at Fondazione Prada since 2004, including the brand's previous Autumn Winter menswear show, which took place below a retractable ceiling that moved to reveal a series of art deco chandeliers.

More recently, the studio also designed the scenography for Prada's Spring Summer 2024 menswear show – an aluminium-clad space with slime falling from the ceiling to form liquid walls.

The photography and video are courtesy of Prada.

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Dutch studio AMO created an aluminium-clad space with slime falling from the ceiling to form liquid walls for fashion house Prada's Spring Summer 2024 menswear show.

Located in the Deposito space at the brand's Rem Koolhaas-designed Fondazione Prada art centre in Milan, AMO clad the walls, floor and suspended ceiling in aluminium to create a cage-like structure for the show.

Within this industrial space, models walked between liquid walls formed by 3,000 kilos of slime that dripped down from the ceiling and formed green puddles on the floor.

A ring of industrial lamps placed around the ceiling lit up the catwalk, adding to its clinical feel.

By creating ever-shifting slime "walls", AMO's design aimed to change the perception of the industrial space, adding an organic aspect that would also affect how the audience saw and interacted with the models.

Both the aluminium structure used for the walls, ceiling and floor and the slime will eventually be sent back to their suppliers to be recycled.

The design of the showspace nodded to that of the collection itself, called Fluid Form, which Prada described as "an examination of fluid architecture, around the human body".

"The concept of fluidity framing the human form again expands, represented through the showspace in the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada," Prada said. "Abstract walls are evoked through fluid interruptions, forming an ever-shifting enfilade through which the models process."

The Fluid Form collection, designed by Prada founder Miuccia Prada and the brand's co-creative director Raf Simons, was designed to have a fluidity that would differ from traditionally rigid tailoring.

"The ultimate aim is a constant awareness of the body within, and its liberation," Prada said.

This fluidity in the design was exemplified by soft, squishy leather bags, looser interpretations of traditionally structured shirts, decorative pockets and applications of corsages and fringes.

"These clothes are ultimately reflective of our natural state – the dynamic movement and constant transformation inherent to humanity," the brand added.

AMO, which is the research and creative studio of Dutch architecture firm OMA, has created numerous show designs for Prada in the Fondazione Prada space.

For the fashion brand's Autumn Winter 2023 menswear show it added a moving ceiling and art deco chandeliers, while last summer's menswear show featured an oversized paper house.

The photography is courtesy of Prada.

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Architects must stop using the vacuous buzzwords that dominate the profession if they are to make a positive difference in the world, writes Reinier de Graaf.

"A civilizational revolution that puts humans first". "An unprecedented urban living experience". "A model for nature preservation and enhanced human livability". "A place for people from across the globe to make their mark on the world in creative and innovative ways, created by a team of world-class architects and engineers".

These are all phrases taken from a press release for The Line, Saudi Arabia's sci-fi megastructure.

The language to promote architecture has become universal. Be it The Line, King Charles' Poundbury or, more recently, the idea to create a School of Place to "revitalize Britain's built environment", backed by UK housing secretary Michael Gove, anything to do with architecture is invariably marketed with the same buzzwords.

Anything to do with architecture is invariably marketed with the same buzzwords

New projects are either "world-class", "award-winning", "creative", "innovative", "sustainable", "livable", "beautiful" or all those combined, and more than seldom foster "a sense of place and wellbeing". These have become the obvious terms of choice, embraced by the Left and the Right, by democracies and dictatorships, in the West as much as in the rest of the world – applied in perfect alignment, and always without a shred of irony.

What is the significance of such buzzwords? When does a building warrant the label "world-class"? What makes one city more "livable" than the next, one building more "beautiful" than the other? What is the meaning of "creativity" or "innovation" in architecture? What building can credibly claim to improve anyone's "wellbeing"?

The urge to claim such attributes hides a grim reality: Vancouver, ranked among the world's most livable cities for 10 consecutive years, has been forced to introduce a vacancy tax; the zero-carbon, zero-waste city of Masdar is about to turn into the world's first green ghost town; Pittsburgh, a city undergoing multiple creative-industry-driven revivals, only did so to end up where it started; and Heatherwick Studio's placemaking icon Vessel remains shut after a spate of suicides.

What are we to conclude when livable cities are too expensive to be lived in, eco ambitions prove unsustainable, creativity equals stagnation, innovation implies regress, and larger-than-life landmarks end up being a springboard to death?

The more architecture is explained, the more architects seem to owe the world an explanation. All too often, our craft ends up being on the wrong side of history: complicit in escalating house prices, an integral part of the largest CO2-emitting industry, oblivious to the political machinations it helps perpetuate.

Idolized for much of the 20th century, architecture today mostly registers as a cause for concern – a discipline to be scrutinized and kept in check. The incorporation of extraneous terms such as "livability", "innovation" or "wellbeing" into the glossary of architecture is far from coincidental; it is part of an ongoing trend, in which the language to debate architecture is less and less architects' own, and more and more that of outside forces imposing outside expectations.

The architecture profession has become moot

Once a discipline of foresight – a domain that created standards – architecture is progressively expected to comply to standards set by others. From architects trying to explain to the world what they are doing, we increasingly witness a world in which architects are told what they ought to be doing, forced to adopt ever-more extreme postures of virtue, held to account by the world of finance, the social sciences and even the medical sector, each with less disputable evidence at their disposal.

Confronted with ever-growing armies of "thought leaders", "strategy consultants", "content specialists", advocates of "best practice" and "subject-matter experts", the architecture profession has become moot, left with no other option than to mimic the language of those who have co-opted its intellectual domain.

Listening to any contemporary conversation on architecture is like being indulged in a form of Orwellian Newspeak, which, in the name of "the good", has banned all antonyms. The discourse that ensues is as uncontestable as it is uncomfortable. What architect, in their right mind, would wish for people to be unhealthy, want to design unlivable buildings, or put humans last?

And yet, I wonder: what becomes of architecture if the sole ambition of architects is to live up to expectations? What remains of our work once it becomes an echo-chamber of universally applied buzzwords? Not much, probably. In echoing the words of others, architects will most likely find themselves driven further into a corner, unable to make any meaningful difference, at the mercy of extraneous quests which they are neither able to resist nor capable of fulfilling.

In a world facing the imminent consequences of climate change, pervasive economic inequality, and a resurgence of authoritarian rule, much of the prevailing rhetoric will prove all but a lofty waste of time. If architects really wish to engage with the issues of our time on their own terms, they best start by addressing these issues in their own terms.

Reinier de Graaf is a Dutch architect and writer. He is a partner in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and co-founder of its think-tank AMO. He is the author of Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, the novel The Masterplan, and the forthcoming Architect, verb: The New Language of Building.

The image, showing part of the cover of Architect, verb: The New Language of Building, is courtesy of Verso Books.

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AMO, the research and creative studio of OMA, added a retractable ceiling to the Fondazione Prada that moved to reveal a series of art deco chandeliers for Prada's Autumn Winter 2023 menswear show.

Situated within the Deposito, a vast, concrete-lined warehouse-style space at Milan's Fondazione Prada, the Autumn Winter 2023 show took place during Milan Fashion Week on Sunday 15 January 2023.

"For the Prada Fall Winter 2023 menswear show, AMO has conceived a scenography that transforms while the audience attends the show, altering the perception of the space inside the Deposito at Fondazione Prada," said AMO.

"The room is left bare, filled only with rows of benches rendered with concrete."

Before the show began, the room looked like a dimly lit, concrete bunker, measuring 2.7 metres tall and decorated only by rows of concrete benches.

As models entered the room, the dropped ceiling began to raise slowly revealing a haze of glowing light from a number of square openings in its surface.

From here, three-tiered chandeliers, made from translucent ribbed polycarbonate sheets, were revealed from within the openings in the ceiling and brightened the concrete art storage space as the ceiling continued to raise higher.

The moving ceiling functioned as a result of a series of chains attached to motorised systems that raised and lowered the false ceiling from box trusses across the Deposito's original ceiling.

At its final height, the ceiling reached nine metres tall and showcased 16 art deco-style chandeliers suspended above the runway, Prada's latest Autumn Winter 2023 menswear collection and its audience.

The chandeliers revealed the entirety of the room and the orange-painted structural beams that flank the walls of the Deposito as well as the tape and installation-marked floors from the sets of former Prada shows, such as its Spring Summer 2019 show, and various exhibitions.

After peaking at nine metres tall, the ceiling began to return to its initial height restoring the concrete room to its cold, barely-lit bunker form.

"During the show, the ceiling rises, revealing an array of three-meter-tall chandeliers – designed to reference a classical shape with an industrial materiality – and then withdraws to its initial position."

"The proportions and atmosphere of the room change almost imperceptibly from a dark low-ceiling room to a warm, monumental salon-like space, and back again."

The set also nodded to AMO’s previous sets for Prada.

It drew parallels from AMO's 2015 set for the Italian fashion house's Spring Summer 2016 show, which saw translucent "stalactites", similarly constructed from translucent sheets of polycarbonate, suspended above curving rows of concrete seating.

Prada is headed by Italian designer Miuccia Prada and Belgian designer Raf Simons who joined the house as co-creative director in 2020. In 2022, Simons unexpectedly announced the closing of his 27-year-old namesake label.

At this season's Paris Fashion Week, Saint Laurent showcased its Autumn Winter 2023 menswear show at the Tadao Ando-renovated Bourse de Commerce.

The photography and video are courtesy of OMA.

Project credits:

Partner: Rem Koolhaas
Associate: Giulio Margheri
Team: Alex Tintea, Luisa Carvalho, Laura Martinelli

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Fashion brand Stone Island has debuted a retail concept by Dutch studio AMO, which includes surfaces made from compressed shredded paper, burnt cork and sand-coated steel.

The research studio, affiliated with architecture firm OMA, created the store concept to celebrate Stone Island's 40th anniversary.

As well as an update to the look and feel of the interiors, AMO has designed the spaces to host a program of public presentations, salons, workshops and private events beyond store opening hours.

For the store's architecture, the studio referenced the "innovative" approach taken by the Italian brand to transforming materials for its products, particularly outwear.

"Research and innovation are at the core of Stone Island," said AMO director Samir Bantal, who worked with Natalie Konopelski, Giulio Margheri and Mateusz Kiercz on the project.

"The space, materiality, and program of the stores underpin the brand's ethos, and reinforce a sense of belonging of its community of like-minded people," he continued.

The inaugural store to be designed based on this direction is the 180-square-metre space in Chicago, Stone Island's first in the city.

The space features altar-like niches for displaying archival pieces and prototypes to highlight Stone Island's focus on technology and development.

Surfaces throughout the store are intended to look like stone, though none are actually made from it. Instead, off-the-shelf materials have been treated in a variety of ways to replicate the same visual qualities.

Shredded paper and resin were compressed under high pressure to produce durable panels that mimic concrete, and used to create sculptural displays for products.

Cork – which is a staple in existing Stone Island stores – was burnt, sandblasted and coated to create a dark texture. Applied to the walls, the material helps to both absorb sound and control humidity, while the ceiling is covered with a sawtooth arrangement of translucent light boxes.

Corrugated steel panels were sand-coated to create a softer finish and used to form a curved partition around the fitting rooms.

At the store's entrance, which has a bright orange floor, a digital chandelier is suspended from the ceiling and broadcasts messages to shoppers.

Following the opening of the Chicago store in October 2022, plans are in place to roll out the concept at locations including Seoul, Munich and Stockholm.

"Stone Island and AMO share values of innovation, functionality, and passion," said Stone Island creative director and president Carlo Rivetti.

"I am very happy to begin this important partnership, a new visual approach for our stores, to speak to our communities."

AMO was founded as the research arm of OMA, and has developed long-standing relationships with several fashion brands.

One of its most frequent collaborators is Prada – the studio has designed a number of environments for the Italian brand's runways shows over the years.

Most recently, AMO worked with French brand Jacquemus to create a Paris boutique with a "bedroom-like" interior and a terracruda-clad shop-in-shop at London's Selfridges.

The photography is by Marco Cappelletti, courtesy of Stone Island and OMA/AMO.

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Dutch studio AMO has used pillows to form the display stands and line the walls in this tactile womenswear boutique by fashion brand Jacquemus in Paris, France.

The 60-square-metre shop, set in the department store Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, was designed to feel like a bedroom according to AMO, which is the research and design arm of architecture firm OMA.

"The location of the shop within the Galleries Lafayette – without windows or daylight – led to the idea of creating a bedroom-like environment: a room entirely made of pillows," said OMA partner Ellen van Loon.

"It is a cocooning and relaxed atmosphere, inviting customers to lounge and browse for as long as they want," she told Dezeen.

The linen pillows were designed to reference the textiles of Provence, where Jacquemus founder Simon Porte Jacquemus grew up.

"We explored a material palette that aims to capture the atmosphere of Provence," said OMA architect Giulio Margheri.

"The fabric of the pillows is a reference to the linens of the South of France," he told Dezeen.

AMO also added a stack of pillows to serve as a seating area for shoppers, as well as a spot to showcase Jacquemus' signature tiny bags.

The studio completed the store's easy-going atmosphere with the help of a stripped-back scheme, including cream-coloured carpet, soft lighting and clothing rails in a milky beige hue.

AMO previously designed another store for Jacquemus inside the London department store Selfridges. Much like the brand's Paris outpost, the shop was wrapped entirely in a single material – clay.

"The design of the Jacquemus boutiques in London and Paris began with the idea of testing the limits of working with a single material," Van Loon explained.

"Instead of working on the design first and deciding on the materials afterwards, we let the materials dictate their presence in the space."

The Jacquemus store is one of many retail interiors AMO has designed in Paris.

Among them is a pop-up shop by Tiffany & Co that showcases an array of jewellery pieces and a flagship store for clothing brand Off-White that features abstract interpretations of Parisian courtyards and flea markets.

Project credits
Partner: Ellen van Loon
Architect: Giulio Margheri
Team: Valerio Di Festa, Camille Filbien and Mattia Locci

The photography is by Benoit Florençon, courtesy of AMO.

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Dutch studio AMO has created a terracruda-clad shop-in-shop with curving tiered shelving for French-fashion brand Jacquemus at luxury department store Selfridges.

The boutique was installed as a permanent retail space located on the ground floor of London department store Selfridges and is host to Jacquemus bags and accessories.

Designed by AMO, the research and design arm of architecture firm OMA, it incorporates curving, floor-to-ceiling display shelving clad in a clay-based material that is said to echo materials local to Provence.

Between rows of curving and tiered display shelving, plinths, totems, tables and chairs decorate the retail space's interior and display the brand's latest bags and accessories.

Hidden compartments and cabinets were fitted within display units to create a sense of discovery while also tying the space to the trio of surrealist Jacquemus pop-up installations that ran through May in and around Selfridges and Oxford Street.

The permanent retail space follows as a result of the success of the Le Bleu surrealist pop-up installations that were created by Dutch experience design firm Random Studio and invited customers to explore and discover the brand's products.

Terracruda clay was applied by hand across the interior of the store to create an uneven surface and natural look. The earthiness of the clay visually juxtaposes against the rigid and solid forms that are populated by colourful bags and accessories.

Seating areas set within the curving displays are framed by views out to Duke Street and the nearby David Chipperfield-designed entrance that was added to the store in 2018.

"The inspiration for the design of the Jacquemus space owes to the brand’s origins in the south of France," said OMA partner Ellen van Loon.

"We wanted to capture the atmosphere of Provence through the materiality of the space, which led us to approach the design in a different way altogether," she continued.

"Instead of working with form and deciding on the materials afterwards, we chose the materials at the outset and let them guide the shape of the space."

Swedish streetwear label, Axel Arigato recently unveiled its "upside-down" pop-up sneaker store in the luxury department store that features an office-themed interior.

In Paris, Acne Studios opened a monolithic store on Rue Saint Honoré that is clad in Parisian limestone and references a Stockholm skatepark.

The photography is by Lewis Ronald.

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Italian fashion brand Prada collaborated with AMO to create an entirely paper show space that resembled an oversized house for its Spring Summer 2023 menswear show.

Taking place at Milan's Fondazione Prada, AMO – the research studio of Dutch architecture studio OMA – transformed the space into an oversized home with walls, windows, floors and curtains constructed from rolls of heavyweight raw-edged paper.

Expanses of brown paper covered the floor, with the edges of each brown sheet visible and slightly curled.

Rolls of white paper were unfurled to form a series of rooms with ten-metre-tall walls, doorways and windows that look as though they were drawn by a child.

"We wanted to create an atmosphere that conveys softness and modesty in the context of a world in which aggression is increasingly present," said OMA project architect Giulio Margheri.

"We took the idea of a simple house, as if drawn by children, and scaled it up to the size of the Deposito, the space at Fondazione Prada that hosts the fashion shows."

Paper rolls were organised at different heights to create oversized doorways that lead to the following rooms and fixed, at their raw edge end, to metal truss systems that span across the ceiling of the Fondazione Prada.

Large openings, shaped like four paned windows, pierce the layered paper walls of the show space and provide glimpses of the room beside.

Models appeared from behind a large opening in the walls of the paper home wearing patterned knit jumpers, gingham checked coats, denim play suits and miniature leather shorts adorned with zippers.

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, Prada's co-creative directors, combined contradictory materials, styles, fabrics, silhouettes and cuts in an effort to create an expression of choice for its wearers.

"For Prada's fashion shows we've always worked with materials that are not very expensive," said Margheri. "Today more than ever the idea of luxury is questionable when there is a shortage of fuel, materials and food."

"Paper is a simple material; it's the basic surface onto which we architects express our ideas. In this project, we wanted to explore its qualities as an architectural element, but in a playful and naïve way."

Guests were seated in two rows along the walls of the paper rooms on cubic chairs formed entirely from corrugated cardboard.

Lone gingham-printed, oversized paper curtains – that match the red gingham of the coats appearing alongside them– were placed sparingly beside windows throughout the space.

The red and white printed curtain stretches from the top of the paper walls to the floors and was accordion folded to mimic that of neatly gathered fabric.

Prior to the show, invitations were delivered to guests via means of a paper coat, which was neatly folded within an envelope and featured relevant show details printed across its back.

The coat-cum-invite was constructed from Repap – a material derived from stone dust and resin – and was held together at its seams by running stitches.

Prada has been a long collaborator with AMO and has seen Koolhaas design show spaces for the storied fashion house since 2004.

For Raf Simons' debut collection as co-creative director, the research studio created a series of faux-fur-covered geometric rooms that served as a backdrop for its Autumn Winter 2021 menswear show.

For Prada's Autumn Winter 2022 show, AMO installed cinema seats and a tunnel-cum-runway that references the spacecraft in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, to the Fondazione Prada. The same set was later reused for Prada's following womenswear show in February 2022.

Photography is by Agostino Osio, courtesy of Prada and OMA.

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Cinema seats and a runway tunnel that resembles the spacecraft in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey formed the backdrop to Prada's 2022 Fall Winter menswear show at Fondazione Prada, designed by AMO.

AMO, the research arm of Dutch architecture studio OMA, drew on sci-fi references to emphasise the relationship between theatre and technology for the Italian fashion brand's latest show.

The studio transformed a large room inside the OMA-designed Fondazione Prada's Deposito – a renovated building that lies on the western side of the Milanese complex into a "theatrical space".

The studio covered the floor of the main room in an olive green carpet and added rows of cinema seats that were sourced from a cinema elsewhere at the Fondazione Prada.

"The idea of the show is a reinterpretation of a theatrical space; it is a stage for action, familiar yet surprising," AMO project architect Giulio Margheri told Dezeen.

"The typical configuration of the theatre with a clear division between the stage and the audience has been deconstructed, bringing the guests into different parts of the room while leaving a large empty space for the models to walk."

While guests entered the room via a sparse concrete tunnel, models walked through a tunnel of metal grating lit with blue neon lights.

The geometric tunnel is distinctly reminiscent of the spaceship in Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"The sci-fi element comes into contrast with the overall atmosphere of the set," explained Margheri. "We tested it in different forms and eventually materialised it in the form of a tunnel, which has its own spatial identity while at the same time changing the perception of the show space."

"The blue lights enhance the friction between spaces we were looking for and express the reference imagery we had in mind," he added.

To contribute to the performative nature of the show, Hollywood actors were called on to model the clothes. Theatrical spotlights followed the models as they walked in a zig-zag pattern through the space.

The cast included 10 internationally recognised actors including American actor Jeff Goldblum, who is best known for his role in the sci-fi film Jurassic Park.

Goldblum sported an all-black outfit consisting of a heavy overcoat, turtleneck sweater and leather gloves from the collection. His look aligned with the collection's workwear aesthetic.

Other celebrity appearances included Kyle Maclachlan, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Damson Idris, who joined models presenting oversized trousers, boiler suits and double-breasted blazers.

AMO frequently designs the sets for Prada's fashion shows. The longtime pairing between the two was born from the close relationship between their respective founders Rem Koolhaas and Miuccia Prada.

Last year AMO installed a bright red tunnel and matching floating squares on a beach in Sardinia for Prada's Spring/Summer 2022 menswear show. In 2018, the studio illuminated a Prada catwalk show with pink neon lights arranged around a strict grid structure.

The photography is by Agostino Osio, courtesy of OMA.

Project credits:

Partner in charge: Rem Koolhaas
Team: Giulio Margheri, Alex Tintea, Theodora Gelali, Eugene Kim and Luisa Carvalho Punchirolli

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Off-White's latest AMO-designed flagship store features abstract interpretations of Paris's courtyards and flea markets.

Located two blocks away from Place Vendôme, the Off-White Paris store extends over three floors of a 19th-century corner building.

The outpost is the second Off-White store to be designed by AMO – the creative think tank of the OMA – following the Miami flagship last year.

The project was led by architect Ellen van Loon, who joined OMA in 1998, together with AMO director Samir Bantal, and architect Giulio Margheri.

"The ambition is for the store to lead a new direction for what high fashion retail can mean," said Off-White founder and creative director Virgil Abloh.

"Within Paris at Place Vendome is the perfect context to expand the conversation," he told Dezeen.

"The space was designed to be a node within the city, not just a self-serving retail store. It's a flexible piece of built architecture that is a device to challenge traditions."

AMO described the space, which features both neutral and colourful spaces and contrasting combinations of textures and colours, as a space where "Parisian elegance" meets "industrial rawness".

"Off-White's identity is translated into a design that creates a series of spaces with different identities – reflecting the eclectic nature of the brand and its founder," AMO told Dezeen.

"The evolution of the brand from streetwear to street luxe is also found in the choice of materials, which juxtapose elements from these two realms."

The store's main entrance is located under the arches of Rue de Castiglione where customers enter through a semi-circular vestibule of corrugated glass.

The entrance leads customers to a reinterpretation of the typical Parisian courtyard that showcases the women's collection.

Framed by arches inspired by the street's portico, its walls and floors are clad in white travertine. The studio designed this refined space to provide customer's with a calm and slow shopping experience and to accommodate events such as fashion shows.

In contrast, the store's entrance on Rue du Mont Thabor ushers customers into a space with light blue walls and a black terrazzo floor, filled with AMO-designed freestanding furniture that showcases Off-White's brand partnerships.

On the store's upper floors a mezzanine with a low ceiling and small windows hosts the kids' and homeware collections, as well as an exhibition wall.

On the second floor, a high ceiling and large windows that face the city create a bright and clear space that displays the men's collection but which can be easily reconfigured for concerts, art shows and parties.

A foldable box structure finished with Sottsass-red veneer conceals a bar and the store's back of house.

The floor accommodates freestanding display elements designed by AMO including metallic clothing racks, wooden tables and white travertine shelving systems that recall Parisian flea markets.

"The design explores new ways in which architecture facilitates the interaction between fashion collections and the public," said the studio.

"From the very first conversations with the client, the idea to create a store in the form of a contemporary reinterpretation of Paris caught shape," it continued.

"We gave shape to this image of Paris by playing with architectural elements and materiality, and we let the variety of Parisian shopping experiences guide the way in which we configured and organized the space of the store."

Although the spaces are designed to create distinctly different atmospheres, some materials are used throughout to create continuity, such as travertine, which is used in the courtyard but also for the shelving system on the first floor, the sneaker displays on the second floor, and the eyewear podiums located both on the ground floor and second floor.

The black terrazzo is present on each floor but paired with different mixtures of travertine, tiles and coloured marble.

The design team also referenced Collette, the groundbreaking Parisian luxury concept store that closed in 2017, as a source of inspiration.

"Over twenty years ago, Sarah Andelman's Colette was the predecessor of modern experiential retail; one of the first concept stores where streetstyle met luxury," said Van Loon and Bantal.

"Fast forward to 2021, a couple of blocks away from where Colette sat, the new Off-White store in Paris represents the brand's multifaceted identity as a cultural channel broadcasting style, media and fashion, humbly saluting Colette and drawing from its irreplaceable legacy."

Abloh added: "Working with AMO is a synergistic process. The way we ideate is similar – nothing is off-limits – and the outcome at Off-White Paris is greater than I could have ever imagined."

AMO's relationship with Abloh began in 2018 when the studio created the designer's first solo exhibition Figures of Speech.

Photography by Benoit Florençon, courtesy of OMA.

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AMO, the creative think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has created a bright red tunnel and matching floating squares for fashion house Prada's Spring/Summer 2022 menswear show.

AMO – the research arm of the architecture studio OMA – designed a tunnel runway as well as red installations on a beach in Sardinia for a film showcasing the Italian brand's menswear collection.

Models are shown on floating red squares

The twisting red tunnel acted as a runway for the models, who wore designs from Prada's latest collection.

On exiting it, the models walked across several red squares that were used to create stepping stones across the sand. These also formed islands in the ocean that the models could sit on.

Giulio Margheri, the project architect at AMO told Dezeen that he wanted the show to be a "return to a world without constrictions, represented by an infinite coastal landscape."

"The 'utopia of normality' is reflected in memories of familiar seaside installations, conceived as bare elements that enigmatically dialogue with the pristine surroundings," Margheri said.

The first half of the show was filmed at Fondazione Prada in Milan, the OMA-designed exhibition space where the brand typically presents its collections.

The second half of the fashion show, which saw models lounging in the Mediterranean Sea, was filmed on a beach in Sardinia.

The decision to place a bright red tunnel in the middle of the natural beach landscape was supposed to create "a surreal encounter with nature".

"The Sardinian beach landscape introduces a calm and captivating rhythm in the display of the architectural elements, emphasized by the movements of the camera," Margheri explained.

Both the tunnel and the installations are made from treated wood. The "powerful" red colour was selected as it symbolizes "energy and confidence".

According to the architect, "this generates friction in the landscape and results in a new yet familiar environment", capturing the theme of the collection.

The collection was digitally streamed to audiences on 20 June and viewers can also watch a virtual tour that takes you into the tunnel and through each look.

AMO always designs sets for Prada shows, thanks to the close relationship between founders Miuccia Prada and Rem Koolhaas.

The studio has completed multiple designs for the brand, including a series of faux-fur covered geometric rooms for its Spring Summer 2019 menswear show and a neon blue runway for its 2020 Spring/Summer menswear show in Shanghai.

Photographs by Agostino Osio courtesy of AMO.

Project credits:

Partner in charge: Rem Koolhaas
Team: Giulio Margheri, Alex Tintea, Valerio Di Festa and Fatemeh Mahmoudyar

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Architect Rem Koolhaas and his research studio AMO have designed an abstract set made of geometric rooms covered in tactile materials for fashion house Prada's Autumn Winter 2021 menswear presentation.

To mark Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons' debut menswear collection as co-designers at the storied Italian house, Koolhaas and AMO devised four rooms in different shapes connected by square doorways clad in a variety of colourful, unexpected materials.

The space, which featured circular, rectangular and hexagonal rooms, was organised "to create the illusion of a never-ending route," architect Giulio Margheri, who led AMO's collaboration with Prada, told Dezeen.

"The creative process around the show is an open conversation between AMO and Prada. Ideas emerge during our kick-off meetings, almost spontaneously, out of a relentless pursuit to challenge the format of the show," Margheri expanded.

The set's "non-spaces" were characterised by walls and floors clad in resin, faux fur, marble and plaster.

"The textures add complexity to the space, while remaining an abstract background for the protagonist," Margheri said.

The spaces were not meant to reference any one environment in particular, but to be juxtaposed to channel dualities such as hard versus soft, warm versus cold, and interior versus exterior. 

"We tinkered with the idea of the passage of time, and the design evolved into an abstract sequence of spaces that reflect different intimate moments of the day and their distinctive qualities," AMO explained.

Red faux fur blanketed the walls of the first rectangular room while contrasting black glossy resin floors provided an isolated backdrop and reflected the collection's colour-blocked styles as models moved to the next space. 

With every new room, the space inverted the material arrangement of the room before it. The circular plan of the second space featured seamless white marble walls and a sky blue faux fur floor that motioned like water as the models passed through it.

Dark magenta faux fur clad the walls of the penultimate room, while its square footprint saw floors decorated with a pale green marble.

The last room – a hexagonal shape – was themed with pastel pinks. Fur floors continued the pattern from the previous rooms, while matte plaster walls contrasted with the previous shiny surfaces for an unexpected conclusion. 

"Architecture helped us to describe the feeling we had: this strange, abstract place that's not inside and not outside…tactility and sensuality," Prada explained during a digital Q&A with students from around the world hosted in the show space following the collection's live stream on 17 Janurary.

"It was not important for us to create a narrative architectural context for the collection, more a feeling context," Simons added.  

The materials used in the set will be upcycled and repurposed, used in product displays and pop-ups for future Prada installations globally and donated to Meta, a Milan-based circular economy project that offers sustainable solutions for waste disposal.

Meta works with La Réserve des Arts, an association that makes raw material and decoration waste from fashion shows available to professionals and students in the cultural sector.

The show space is available to experience in 3D. This is one of AMO's many show spaces for Prada – for the fashion house's Spring Summer 2019 menswear show they designed a neon-lit space with inflatable Vernon Panton chairs.

Photography is by Agostino Osio, courtesy of OMA.

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Fashion designer Virgil Abloh and AMO director Samir Bantal have designed the Off-White flagship store in Miami Design District to be a fulfilment centre and a multipurpose events space.

Abloh, who owns the brand Off-White, and Bantal, director of architecture firm OMA's research arm AMO, designed the store to rethink how physical shops should operate amid the growing popularity of digital shopping.

"We're niche entities, AMO, Off-White, Samir and myself, so we're able to sort of wear our heart on our sleeve or our brain on our sleeve," Abloh told Dezeen. "The first slide that Samir sent for the development was like, is shopping relevant?"

"If we're able to kind of fulfil our needs by ordering a lot of things online, what's the role of a physical store?," Bantal added.

The idea is that the store is flexible, according to Abloh, who cited the annual Art Basel and Design Miami events that take place in Miami as examples of when it could be used to host a variety of activities, like art and music events, and talks.

"There might be 1,000 people, you know, in key moments of that year where the shop can host a runway show, it can host a talk, it can host a cafe," Abloh said.

"It'll be a cafe that extends out into the street, it'll be what the environment needs it to be rather than the betting on, hey, this square footage needs to be used for retail 24/7," he added.

"Who knows, by the time it opens I might turn it into like an Uber delivery of Off-White – that's the freedom and the fun."

In response, the store is stripped back to only provide storage space for apparel on sale so it could easily be used for a variety of activities and cultural events.

"We played with the idea of translating the store into a fulfilment center," Bantal explained. "Fulfillment of not only the monetary transaction you do by buying a product, but also fulfilment in terms of like the engagement you have with a brand, or the aura of a brand."

"This, of course, being in Miami Design District led to the idea of creating a space that is adjustable and transformable over time," Bantal continued. "We should be able to kind of compress the retail parts to almost like a storage element in the store, and open the store to a kind of variety of cultural events."

Located at 127 NE 41 Street, the two-storey store is fronted with an opaque polycarbonate wall on the ground floor that can be pushed back, squeezing the storage of the apparel to the rear and opening the front to the street.

"You almost push everything that is retail and compress it in the space behind and then of course, ultimately it ends up in storage," said Bantal. "While the space in front of that facade is completely open and free and can be used for any function."

Above the moveable wall is the word Shop with a red cross in front – a tongue-in-cheek nod to the concept behind the project.

"This is the first Off White store to have a facade you know, that street level so the expression, the signage, you know, as the words Shop is a shop, but then has like, an X through the middle, and it's very, like monolithic," said Abloh. "The face of the concept is expressed on the facade."

Inside, the team aimed to continue to the theme of the fulfilment centre through a stripped-back industrial aesthetic – including floors rendered in lightly stained concrete, walls lined in corrugated metal and mesh ceiling panels.

Off-White apparel will be displayed on either stainless steel shelving or black marquina and white Carrara marble rails. All the furniture is placed on wheels or is collapsible so it can be moved about to accommodate events.

The pared-back style acts as a backdrop to a series of artworks that will be installed in the store and the bold electric blue stair that leads to the first floor. On this level, the brand intends to host more intimate events like dinner parties.

Abloh, who is also the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection, founded his Off-White brand as a ready-to-wear streetwear label in 2012. He previously teamed up with Bantal to design Figures of Speech, a retrospective exhibition of his career at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA).

The store joins a number of fashion flagships in Miami Design District, which Craig Robins transformed from a formerly neglected area into the hub for design boutiques, luxury fashion brands and art galleries.

Others include Joseph, which London firm Sybarite design with a spiral black staircase, Christian Louboutin, which is covered in tree bark, Dior, which has a boutique sheathed in curved white concrete panels, and Tom Ford, which is housed in a pleated concrete shop designed by Aranda\Lasch.

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Rem Koolhaas's research organisation AMO has partnered with car manufacturer Volkswagen to develop an electric tractor based on the companies' "shared interest in the countryside".

The concept for the e-tractor forms part of the Countryside, The Future exhibition curated by Koolhaas and AMO that is currently showing at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York. As part of the exhibition, Koolhaas placed a tractor in front of the museum on Fifth Avenue.

Although few details of the concept have been revealed, AMO and Volkswagen stated that the electric tractor was being developed for use in sub-Saharan Africa.

It is being designed to increase the productivity of small-scale subsistence farmers, the organisations said. The vehicle will not be sold to individuals but will instead be rented to villages so it can be shared by farmers.

"When I saw the study of the e-tractor for the first time, I realised it was a really fundamental moment," said Koolhaas. "This machine can change a lot."

"The e-tractor project is a great example of how we can link creativity and technology," said Benita von Maltzahn, director of cultural engagement at Volkswagen.

"Volkswagen is committed to develop sustainable mobility concepts for generations to come and for establishing new levels of equality. Responding to the radical changes in the countryside is one vital step on that way."

Visualisations of the concept show a variety of farming and mechanical vehicles, which all have a removable battery inserted into the front of the chassis. These would be charged by solar energy provided by tree-like structures supporting solar panels.

"Modularity is key in the design of the ecosystem, embracing sustainability and re-usability," said Volkswagen.

"The battery can be swapped and used as an independent power source when its performance is in decline; modular parts allow for different configurations where the tractor could be assembled with different plows, or even as a drill to drill wells, or just as a people mover."

According to AMO and Volkswagen, the collaboration came about due to a shared interest in the future of the countryside.

AMO, the research studio which was spun out of architecture studio OMA, and OMA founder Koolhaas recently curated the Countryside, The Future exhibition. Occupying the whole of the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York, the exhibition aims to highlight advancements in rural areas through a series of case studies.

"Volkswagen's interest in the countryside has triggered a new research collaboration that will spawn several projects through cross-pollinations between architecture, which is traditionally about stability, and Volkswagen's expertise on mobility," said Samir Bantal, director of AMO.

"We are excited to dive deeper into the issues of rural mobility together with Volkswagen's experts."

AMO and Volkswagen now intend to develop the electronic tractor by setting up partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa with Volkswagen Group South Africa and local universities.

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Rem Koolhaas's exhibition exploring the countryside at New York's Guggenheim museum aims "to put the countryside on the agenda again".

Koolhaas developed the Countryside, The Future exhibition with his research studio AMO, its director Samir Bantal and a series of collaborators. The aim is to highlight advancements in rural areas through a series of case studies.

"This show has nothing to do with art, nothing to do with architecture," said the Dutch architect when presenting the exhibit this week.

"It's a show about sociality, anthropology and politics."

Koolhaas' talk took place in the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum's lecture theatre ahead of the exhibition's opening. The event marked 40 years since he launched his city-focused book Delirious New York in the same venue – and a drastic switch in topic.

Koolhaas said he chose to move his focus away from cities as the "massive neglect of the countryside" had made him "nervous" and "dissatisfied" in the past 10 years. The Guggenheim exhibition aims to rectify this.

"This show's explicit agenda is to put the countryside on the agenda again," he said.

Koolhaas had previously spoken about his concerns in a 2013 video interview with Dezeen, in which he said that the attention of his firm OMA had shifted away from "cliche" cities to non-urban areas.

He later argued in a 2017 interview with Dezeen that the neglect of rural areas contributed to the election of Donald Trump as US president.

Countryside, The Future aims to offer an overview of rural areas from its historical importance, its importance in the 20th century, to its current state and how it can be used in the future. "The museum is a wonderful tool for any author to present a narrative," Koolhaas said.

Visitors are first made aware of the exhibition by a huge Deutz-Fahr tractor parked outside. "We were happy to announce it with the brutal and rare presence in New York of a massive tractor," he said.

Inside, the showcase aims to make use of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed spiralling gallery. Each level is dedicated to a different theme and are covered in large images and texts that act like a continuous wallpaper – an idea that Koolhaas came to late in the process.

"Out of the blue, I get a phone call from work from Rem a year and a half ago and he says: 'I've had a brainwave. Trash everything, we're going to cover the whole museum in wallpaper'," Troy Conrad Therrien, Guggenheim's curator of architecture and digital initiatives, told Dezeen.

Journalist Niklas Maak and Harvard Graduate School of Design students have also wallpapered the large column that rises through the museum with images that address the theme in topics like fashion, women's land army, cars, country music and toys.

The first level of the exhibit is adorned with Koolhaas' essay titled ?, which poses many questions about rural areas.

Level two, called Leisure and Escapism, is lined with a decorated curtain that traces the history of the countryside from Roman and Chinese cultures up to the way that the contemporary wellness industry is capitalising on it.

The "political redesign" of the countryside is addressed in eight case studies on level three that include examples of change in rural areas in the Soviet Union and Qatar.

Therrien said that although the exhibit features large passages of text, the experience remains "fundamentally different" to reading a book. "It's closer to an opera or a film where you have an incredibly dense playbill, or a series of subtitles as you go," he added.

On the fourth level, the focus turns to examples of contemporary ways that the countryside is used in various areas in the world.

China is studied through an example of a high-rise occupied by farmers and the development of rural e-commerce villages known as Taobao. It provides an important example of the ways that the countryside can be used, according to Koolhaas.

"China is the only country that has an official policy on what to do with the countryside," said Koolhaas. "The state is seriously involved in maintaining the countryside but also creating new possibilities in the countryside."

Other countries explored include Kenya – which was developed through a partnership with the University of Nairobi – as well as Germany, France, Italy and the US.

The fifth level turns attention to the effects of the climate crisis, which Koolhaas said is much more prevalent than in cities. "Our concentration on cities is itself a handicap in understanding global warming," added the architect.

The key feature of this storey are two world maps called Half Earth and Shared Planet. They show the differing ways that greenery could be integrated in the earth in order to meet the carbon reduction targets of the Paris Agreement.

Called Nature/Preservation, this section also comprises studies exploring the current effects on rural areas due to climate change, such as thawing permafrost, and the impact of major preservation efforts to save gorillas.

The final floor, which is laid out to follow Wright's regular grid, showcases technologies that could be implemented, such as high-tech indoor farming and on-land fish farming.

Countryside, The Future opened 20 February and will be on show for six months until the 14 August. Koolhaas said the length of time is intended to give ample opportunity for it to be seen by both locals and tourists alike.

Koolhaas founded OMA, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in 1975. The internationally recognised studio now has offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Doha, Dubai and Perth.

The architect also heads the sister organisation AMO, which conducts research and gathers intelligence that feeds into the firm's project.  The studio is known for more experimental projects like catwalks for fashion brands Prada and Miu Miu.

Photography is by Laurian Ghinitoiu, courtesy of AMO.

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The "most radical" changes to civilisation come from the countryside rather than cities, according to architect Rem Koolhaas, who will explore the topic in a major exhibition opening at New York's Guggenheim Museum next week.

The architect and AMO, the research arm of his firm OMA, have produced the Countryside, The Future exhibit to spotlight rural areas, where Koolhaas says the biggest advancements are taking place.

"The countryside is now the site where the most radical, modern components of our civilisation are taking place," Koolhaas said.

"An exhibition like this would have been impossible 20 years ago."

Koolhaas made the comments in a short video that the Guggenheim Museum in New York released ahead of the opening of the showcase on 20 February.

Forms culmination of years of countryside research

"New York is obviously a fantastic platform to launch a show which is about the absolute opposite of New York – the space on the earth outside the city," Koolhaas continued.

Described by Dutch architect as "absurdly ambitious", it forms a culmination of years of research he has conducted into the rural areas.

In a 2013 video interview with Dezeen, he said OMA's focus had shifted away from "cliche" cities to non-urban areas. "Currently we are thinking about the countryside and what one could do in the countryside, and perhaps a new thinking about the countryside," he said at the time.

He later argued in a 2017 interview with Dezeen that the neglect of the countryside had contributed to the election of Donald Trump as US president.

Dedicated "to everything which is not art"

Findings will displayed through multi-sensory material including photos, videos and archival materials that will fill Guggenheim's spiralling rotunda – as designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. But there will be no art.

"This will be the first time that a major art institution will dedicate itself entirely to everything which is not art," said Koolhaas.

Featured case studies will concentrate on the urgent environmental, political and socioeconomic changes facing countryside locations around the world, including China, South America and California.

These are expected to touch on a wide range of topics – including artificial intelligence, political radicalisation, global warming, mass and micro migration, human-animal ecosystems, the impact of a digital world, and subsidies and tax incentives.

"Some of the answers that we're looking for regarding to climate change and migration, preservation, these answers are to be found in the countryside," added AMO directo Samir Bantal.

AMO and Koolhaas team with students

Koolhaas and AMO worked with students at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the University of Nairobi to undertake the research for the exhibit.

The architect founded OMA, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in 1975. The internationally recognised studio now has offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Doha, Dubai and Perth.

Its current projects include plans to build a residential tower in Kuwait City, a waterfront conference centre in Shenzhen and an angular facade extension for the New Museum.

The architect also heads the sister organisation AMO, which conducts research and gathers intelligence that feeds into the firm's project.  The studio is known for more experimental projects like catwalks for fashion brands Prada and Miu Miu.

Countryside, The Future will run from 20 February to 14 August 2020.

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Rem Koolhaas will explore the radical change in the countryside in an exhibition coming to New York's Guggenheim museum next year.

Opening February 2020, Countryside, The Future will showcase findings from an ongoing investigation led by Koolhaas and AMO, the research arm of the architect's firm OMA.

The aim of the project is to take the focus away from cities to instead investigate rural areas, which Koolhaas says have "changed almost beyond recognition".

"In the past decades, I have noticed that while much of our energies and intelligence have been focused on the urban areas of the world – under the influence of global warming, the market economy, American tech companies, African and European initiatives, Chinese politics, and other forces – the countryside has changed almost beyond recognition," said the architect.

"The story of this transformation is largely untold, and it is particularly meaningful for AMO to present it in one of the world's great museums in one of the world's densest cities."

The exhibition marks the culmination of years of research into non-urban areas by the Dutch architect. "It's a cliche that everybody is living in the city," he said in a 2013 video interview with Dezeen. "Currently we are thinking about the countryside and what one could do in the countryside, and perhaps a new thinking about the countryside."

In a 2017 interview with Dezeen he argued that the obsession with cities and neglect of the countryside had contributed to the election of Donald Trump as US president.

"If you look at all the analysis, all the books, all the vast majority are about the city," he said at the time. "This focus has made us blind to what is happening in the countryside. So it is in our view no so coincidence that that is where the Trump voters were voting."

Koolhaas and AMO have worked on the exhibition with students at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the University of Nairobi, to showcase change through case studies.

"Countryside, The Future will mark a shift from a focus on the urban to the rural, remote, deserted, and wild territories collectively investigated here as 'countryside,' or the 98 per cent of the earth's surface not occupied by cities," the Guggenheim said.

The examples concentrate on the urgent environmental, political and socioeconomic changes facing countryside locations around the world, including China, South America and California.

Findings will be shown in a multi-sensory installation that includes photos, videos and archival materials displayed against a wallpaper that wraps the length the museum's spiralling rotunda.

"Countryside, The Future will offer speculation on the future through evidence of transition from a diverse range of sites," the museum continued.

"It documents examples from around the world as case studies, exposing the dramatic transformations that have taken place in the countryside, while our attention has been collectively focused on the city."

Topics explored through the experimental work encompass artificial intelligence, political radicalisation, global warming, mass and micro migration, human-animal ecosystems, the impact of a digital world and subsidies and tax incentives.

Projects include glass-house farming concept, in which "superfluous" light used during photosynthesis is removed, and a set of imagery that show the amount of land necessary for raising cattle.

Countryside, The Future will open on 20 February 2020 and close in the summer of that year.

An illustrated report featuring the exhibition's content and related public programming will also be published by Taschen in tandem with the showcase.

Focusing on rural areas forms a departure for the architect who has previously focused on cities, including the seminal book Delirious New York, which uses New York City as a metaphor for human behaviour, and SMLXL, which documents the first 20 years of OMA's design work.

Koolhaas founded OMA, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in 1975. The internationally recognised studio now has offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing, Doha, Dubai and Perth. Its current projects include plans to build a residential tower in Kuwait City, a waterfront conference centre in Shenzhen and an angular facade extension for the New Museum.

AMO, meanwhile, is known for more experimental projects like catwalks for fashion brands Prada and Miu Miu. It has also created a display system made up of 43 slim free-standing steel walls for the permanent collection of Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum.

New York's Guggenheim was designed and completed by celebrated 20th-century architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Previous exhibitions in the museum have included an installation by Doug Wheeler that surrounded a standing platform with a desert of white spikes.

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A huge converted grain silo in Shanghai was the setting for Prada's 2020 Spring Summer menswear show, designed by AMO as a hall of futuristic neon lights.

The show took place on 6 June at Silo Hall, Asia's largest silo building. A powerful reminder of Shanghai's industrial heritage, the building provided an appropriate backdrop for Prada's latest mens collection, described by the Italian fashion house as "a power of energy, provocation and freedom".

AMO, the research arm of Dutch firm OMA, transformed the industrial interior of the 80,000-tonne warehouse into an "illuminated vista" of bright blue lights.

A linear runway intersected the longitudinal axis of the monumental, labyrinth-like space, while guests were arranged in the central nave of the building in an amphitheater of circular seats that mirrored the shape of the silos.

Glowing neon lights complemented the hall's raw, industrial character and highlighted the geometry of the space, creating a "glowing enfilade" down the centre of the chamber.

"Mindful of its history, at intervals, the installation of the 2020 Spring Summer Prada Men’s show and events is disrupted by reminders of roughness and industry, embedded in the fabric of the building," said the brand.

"These retain the original character of the building, and the echoes of a past," it added.

The words "I am no longer an artist; I have become a work of art" and "I feel myself a god" were played out on a voiceover as models walked along an expansive runway dressed in oversized striped shirts, double-breasted blazers and colour-block windbreakers.

Colourful backpacks and knee-length shorts added a boyish aesthetic to the Optimistic Rhythm collection, which had retro-futurist overtones that could be seen on jackets and tees featuring vibrantly coloured prints of cassette tapes and video recorders.

This is the first time Prada has strayed from its Milanese stomping grounds –it typically presents its collections in the Fondazione Prada or its own Via Fogazzaro space in Milan.

The special Chinese location was chosen to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the twinning of the cities of Milan and Shanghai.

After the show, guests were invited to the seventh floor of Minsheng Wharf, where various dance, music, light and sound installations were taking place across multiple stages for a one-night-only takeover.

Performers in mirror-covered costumes and large-scale installations covered in neon lights continued the catwalk aesthetic into the afterparty spaces.

Booths upholstered in black and acid green eco-leather ran along the perimeter of a lounge bar for the after-show dinner, while a black lacquer recyclable curtain wrapped around the venue, which was outlined by a series of neon lights spanning the room.

The longtime pairing between Prada and OMA and AMO grew out of a friendship between founders Miuccia Prada and Rem Koolhaas. AMO always designs sets for Prada shows.

This year's show saw AMO continue the neon trend from last year's catwalk design, which featured a grid that marked out spaces for guests sitting on inflatable Verner Panton stools, illuminated by strips of pink neon lights.

Photography is by Orange Image Shanghai, courtesy of OMA.

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For Prada's menswear Spring Summer 2019 show, AMO designed a grid that marked out spaces for guests who sat on inflatable Verner Panton stools.

The Italian fashion house presented its mismatched and colourful mens collection in the stripped-back concrete interiors of its own Via Fogazzaro space in Milan, on 17 June 2018.

Created by AMO – OMA's research and design studio – the set was treated as an "architectural field" designed to control the dynamics of the show.

Described by the studio as maintaining a "strict serial layout," the space was ordered on a grid system based on Cartesian coordinates. This grid defined the areas occupied by guests, with four different routes left free for the models to walk down.

"A geometric pattern invades the room, a manifestation of the principles that organise the show’s choreography," AMO explained.

"Numbers and symbols define the exact positioning of the actors in the space, alluding to geographic coordinates of remote places."

"A regular grid of squares evenly organised in space obsessively cover the surfaces of the room," said AMO.

"It serves as [a] blueprint to occupy the space defining the four trajectories of the catwalk, as well as, which of the squares should be occupied by the stools and therefore the guests," the studio continued.

"Different elements were used to enhance the graphic impact of the grid: the seating code and a set of coordinates that correspond to series of remote islands that somehow recall the mathematical approximation of geographic representation."

The catwalks were lined with an exclusive re-edition of Vernon Panton's 1960s inflatable stool, which AMO and Prada chose for their "contemporary attitude, lightness and transparency."

The cubic stools are not backlighted as they appear to be, but rather are illuminated indirectly and irregularly by scattered light sources that, along with a strip of pink lights along the border of the room, aim to give the space a "psychedelic" feel.

The room's walls were covered in translucent sheets to further reflect the pink lights.

According to AMO the catwalk design aimed to "bring fashion to the foreground" by putting into question the recent practice that sees show sets as "explanatory efforts to contextualise collections."

AMO told Dezeen that Prada does not disclose any details about the fashion collections prior to the show, with the design process for the catwalk beginning before Prada designed the collection.

"Somehow we can grasp the connection between fashion and space just during the show. The collection can be either in tune with the space or in opposition," said the studio.

"For this reason, in this case there was not a specific relation between the catwalk and the fashion, if it wasn't for the geometric patterns that featured in both designs," continued AMO.

Although Prada didn't discuss the collection with AMO before the space was designed, the use of plastic and transparent materials was part of the discussion between the two firms early on, with the inflatable stools chosen to give an "unexpected experience" to the guests.

This is not the first time Prada has worked with OMA and AMO. The pairing grew out of a friendship between founders Miuccia Prada and Rem Koolhaas, and has seen various collaborations over the years.

Previously, AMO divided the catwalk into a series of colourful interiors with beds and benches for Prada's Autumn Winter 2017 show, and installed a sloping mesh for its Spring Summer 2017 show.

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Architects Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and designers Konstantin Grcic, and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have all contributed to Prada's Autumn Winter 2018 menswear collection.

The Italian label invited a range of designers to create garments and accessories for its latest collection, which was presented yesterday as part of this season's menswear fashion week in Milan.

The collaboration, named Prada Invites, called for each designer to take an "industrial" approach using black nylon – a material seen throughout the rest of the collection.

The brand describes this material as "timeless, practical yet precious, an avant-garde expression of elegance for today".

"Drawn from the universe of workwear, the military and industry, the fabric transgresses traditional signifiers of opulence, expressing a fresh breed of transgressive and subversive sophistication," it said.

For their offering, brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec created a bag inspired by folders used to carry and transport art.

"I've always liked the profiles of people – architects, painters and students – walking around with art folders; the movement of that rectangle, its clear-cut, fixed geometry contrasting with the moving bodies," said Ronan Bouroullec.

"This project takes that geometry and instils it in a shoulder bag, with its inside gusset, low fastening, elastic bands and eyelet, and use of a single colour, which produces a subtle graphical playfulness."

Rem Koolhaas, whose practice OMA has a long-standing partnership with Prada, also designed a bag – a backpack that is designed to be worn on the front.

Crediting Prada as being "single-handedly responsible for the return of the backpack", Koolhaas aimed to put a new spin on the classic typology.

His creation features compartments designated for different devices, meaning users can easily organise their belongings.

"Today, waiting in line for a typical airport check of carry-on luggage, it is surprising to note how the shapeless container of the backpack, is inhabited by strict, orthogonal devices like the laptop, the charger, books, toilet bag, and how awkward it is to liberate these objects from their containment in the backpack," he said.

"This project proposes a reinterpretation of the backpack, more suitable to the contemporary urban citizen," he continued. "The frontal position gives a more intimate sense of ownership – a better control of movement, avoiding the chain of oblivious collisions that the backpack inadvertently generates."

German designer Konstantin Grcic used the black nylon material to reinterpret the multi-pocketed vests traditionally worn by fisherman.

"My first thought was to recreate Joseph Beuys' famous fishing vest in Prada black nylon," he said. "Later, I worked on two models, which interpret the theme in a more abstract way: Apron and Hood."

Meanwhile architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron contributed a shirt printed with a pattern based on ancient language.

"Text is perceived as design, pattern, or decoration, comparable to the once potent symbols and signs, now tattooed on human bodies without number," said the duo, co-founders of architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.

"The language that we encounter here is like an archaeological find, as fascinating to us as ancient scrolls or coins because we sense that its time is running out."

As with most seasons, Koolhaas' research lab AMO created the set for the show. Named Prada Warehouse, the set was made up of stacked boxes designed to look like a factory.

Models walked around industrial shelves placed in the centre of the space, while the audience sat around the outside.

Other recent catwalk designs created for the Milanese label by AMO include a series of colourful interiors with beds and benches, and a space filled with mirrors and millennial pink detailing.

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OMA's research and design studio AMO has created a display system made up of 43 slim free-standing steel walls for the permanent collection of Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum.

Called Stedelijk Base, the light and flexible display system features freestanding walls made from 15-millimetre-thick steel plates developed by Tata steel in the Netherlands.

The laser-cut pieces are then coupled together to create solid and stable triangular structures.

"In a productive collaboration with Stedelijk, Arup and Tata Steel, we have created walls like screens, thanks to the slimness of the steel structure," said Rem Koolhaas, OMA and AMO founder.

"These enable a lightness and flexibility in navigating the exhibition space, and encourage the viewer to take different paths in the space, as adventurous as circulation through any city," he continued.

The display is located in the museum's Lower Level Gallery, which until now was only used for temporary exhibitions.

Instead of breaking the space into smaller rooms, the assembled walls enable the collection to be presented as a whole – chronologically along the perimeter of the gallery space, and thematically on the steel walls which intersperse the gallery.

Each of the 45 millimetre-thin walls is devoted to a specific aspect of the collection and feature vitrines and platforms for displaying art and design objects.

Rem Koolhaas and Federico Martelli, who led the project, worked closely together with the curators, researchers and technical staff of the Stedelijk Museum for almost two years – exploring its archives and collections.

During this time, they said "a complex matrix of relations between artworks and objects in the collection" emerged, which in turn influenced the architecture of the display system.

The display's open-ended layout was designed so that visitors can forge their own path through the collection and make unexpected connections between modern and contemporary art and design from 1880 until 1980.

To ensure that the display met strict standards of stability, vibration and security, AMO worked in close collaboration with Arup engineers to design and fabricate the thin yet solid walls.

"The exhibition responds to new ways of absorbing information," said Martelli. "Viewers have become capable of focusing on many things at the same time, and the multiplicity of information in our environment stimulates our curiosity."

"While the organisation of the exhibition responds to thorough research of the museum's collection," he continued. "It is not rigid, we have designed a landscape which allows visitors to discover associations between various artworks and objects."

Stedelijk Base is not the first artwork display system designed by the Rotterdam-based office, and in a statement, the studio explained that the design is an evolution of two previous temporary exhibitions it created.

The first is the Elements of Architecture exhibition at the 2014 Venice Biennale, which the studio says was the starting point for "reconsidering the role of walls as building elements that were initially structural, but that have become mere partitions".

In addition, AMO designed the exhibition display of Serial and Portable Classic for the Fondazione Prada, which reexamined traditional notions of displaying classical sculpture on a pedestal.

Photography is by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti.

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Architecture firm OMA has revealed its previously unseen design for a shapeshifting new venue for London nightclub Ministry Of Sound.

According to Rem Koolhaas' firm, it won a competition to design a new home for the world-famous nightclub back in 2015, but the project was unexpectedly scrapped shortly after.

In a post on his Facebook page, OMA partner Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli wrote: "Apparently we won the competition (we were told so) but then surprisingly the project was cancelled."

OMA was invited by Ministry of Sound to enter the competition, which called for a new building next to the club's historic location in Elephant and Castle, south London.

Based on research from the firm's research studio AMO, the architects proposed a building that changes its shape from night to day, thanks to walls that mechanically lift up and down.

This would allow the nightclub to easily change from open to closed, and to offer spaces that respond to different climate conditions. For instance, the indoor atrium would change to create a VIP roof terrace.

The design also addressed the fact – claimed by OMA – that nightclubs have lost their relevance, now that electronic devices are able to offer the same kind of immersive experience.

The aim was to include as diverse a variety of spatial experiences as possible, to exaggerate the change from day to night.

"The result of our work was a combination of a dynamic design – an experiment on a double identity – and of applied research into the status of nightlife and its spatial implications," said Pestellini Laparelli.

Ministry of Sound was first established in 1991 in a converted office building. As "the first regulated 24-hour safe haven for partygoers to dance throughout the night", it offered an alternative to the illegal warehouse rave scene.

The club went on to become a global brand, but over the years it has had several clashes with the local council over the redevelopment of its surrounding area, and has frequently claimed it was being pushed out.

The company has not yet responded to Dezeen's request for comment as to why its competition for a new building was cancelled.

But it is the latest in a series of problems for London's nightlife scene, which has seen many famous clubs shut down over the last decade because of licensing issues.

Clerkenwell club Fabric almost closed down at the end of last year too, after two teenagers who took drugs at the venue tragically died, but the club reopened this week with stricter security.

OMA and Rem Koolhaas ranked 12th in the Dezeen Hot List,  a countdown of the most newsworthy players in the design industry.

This isn't the first time the Rotterdam-based firm has designed a nightclub – the firm previously created a 1990s-style club in Paris to host a one-off event for fashion brand Miu Miu.

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Metal mesh ramps illuminated by psychedelic coloured lights formed the set for Prada's Spring Summer 2017 menswear show in Milan, which was once again designed by Dutch studio AMO (+ slideshow).

The Italian fashion house presented the outdoor-pursuits-influenced collection as part of Milan fashion week yesterday.

AMO – the research branch of OMA – upheld its longstanding tradition of designing the catwalk. It was installed at the Fondazione Prada complex, the building completed by the Rotterdam-based architecture firm last year.

The studio left the remnants of its design from last season's shows, based on theatres built for public trials of heretics, around the periphery of the space.

In the centre, sections of metal mesh created a continuous ramp suspended between the floor and ceiling. It was used for a false ceiling, and as a covering for architectural elements like columns.

"A continuous metallic surface folds around all the elements of the set: generating an abstract layer, composed of meshes with different patterns and dimensions that overlap to recreate a total space," said AMO.

"The transparency of the cladding material unveils the underlying framework with Cartesian precision."

The sloped runway doglegged up through the space, all the time gradually inclined so the returning models were higher up than those just emerged. For the finale, they walked in the opposite direction – all heading downhill.

The mesh also provided stepped seating for guests, who were deliberately kept at a length from the models.

"The models walk in the centre at a controlled distance from the audience, virtually levitating in the space," AMO added. "They ascend onto the elongated slope of the ramp incessantly, disappearing towards the vanishing point."

Multicoloured lighting installed underneath the surfaces glowed up through the perforations, creating an aesthetic reminiscent of a nightclub – similar to the pop-up space OMA created for Prada's sister brand Miu Miu last year.

As with previously years, the catwalk will be altered slightly to host Prada's Spring Summer 2017 womenswear show in September.

Prada has collaborated with OMA and AMO for many years – a pairing that grew out of a friendship between founders Miuccia Prada and Rem Koolhaas.

Most recently, AMO created a short film to present fashion house Prada's Spring Summer 2016 collection, using graphics that look like architectural renderings.

Previous catwalk designs have featured translucent sheets hung above concrete seating and a series of symmetrical linked vestibules.

Photography is by Agostino Osio, unless stated otherwise.

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OMA's sister studio AMO has created a short film to present fashion house Prada's Spring Summer 2016 collection, using graphics that look like architectural renderings (+ movie).

The research arm of Rem Koolhaas' architecture firm reinterpreted the Indefinite Hangar set design it created for Prada's SS16 catwalk show for the two-and-a-half-minute clip.

The use of block colours, expanses of white and seemingly floating people creates a cartoon-like effect similar to some of OMA's concept visualisations for its architecture projects.

The studio has a longstanding relationship with Miuccia Prada's brand, and AMO has collaborated on its lookbooks since Spring Summer 2007.

For Spring Summer 2012, AMO turned the imagery into a short movie and has continued this Real Fantasies series each season.

"The project highlights the attitude of Prada and the conceptual references of the collection, season after season," said the studio.

The latest video sets models wearing the collection in a three-dimensional blank space, populated with objects and furniture.

"Characters move through a neutral scene between the undefined and distilled fragments of daily life," AMO said. "The horizon and scale constantly shifts, manipulating the frame and disrupting a linear sequence: an artificial landscape where fiction and collection collide."

Throughout the clip, blocks of colour gradually blend through a gradient from blue-green to orange, forming the effect of a "synthetic sunset".

Models move between different scenarios including a waiting room and a train carriage.

Large spherical earrings become raindrops during an outdoor scene, where the colour fills the frame and white is used to suggest objects like lamp posts.

AMO has created several catwalk designs for Prada's fashion shows, including a set based on a public penance theatre for Autumn Winter 2016 and a "timeless ruin" covered in reflective materials for the previous season.

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Theatres built for public trials of heretics informed Dutch studio AMO's set design for Italian fashion house Prada's Autumn Winter 2016 catwalk presentations (+ slideshow).

The installation was used for Prada's menswear and pre-fall womenswear show yesterday, and will also be used to present womenswear during Milan Fashion Week next month.

AMO – the research arm of Rem Koolhaas' Rotterdam-based architecture firm OMA – used panels of oriented strand board (OSB) to construct the set at the Fondazione Prada complex that OMA completed last year.

The space is based on the theatre-like settings used for auto-da-fé – public trials for heretics during the Spanish, Portuguese and Mexican Inquisitions.

These ceremonies took place in urban squares or esplanades. They typically involved a procession of prisoners and the reading of their sentences, before being taken out of the city and burned at the stake.

AMO chose to relate this process to the fashion show, which is becoming increasingly publicly accessible through the use of digital streaming and social media.

"The division between the role of the audience and actor is blurring: all have become players in the same secular ceremony of the fashion show," said AMO. "No longer relegated to passive observer, the spectator is now an active participant in the events unfolding in front of them."

"The mass of fragmented instant data is uploaded and critiqued by a multitude of voices," the studio continued. "This consumption of images is like a public trial, a contemporary transposition of the auto-da-fé."

Using the wooded boards, the studio built a peristyle around the edges of the space and series of balconies above.

"This assemblage of structures breaks through the building, expanding into the surrounding streets and urban domain," AMO said.

Long blocks of the same material form bleacher-style seating on the periphery and a raised platform located in the centre of the room, both for the audience.

"No longer bystanders, they become active participants in the ritual unfolding around them," said AMO.

Models parade on a rectangular catwalk, illuminated by rows of spotlights suspended from the ceiling.

The lighting was designed to highlight the uneven texture of the OSB and create an atmosphere similar to chiaroscuro – an Italian painting technique that creates a dramatic effect by contrasting intense portions of light and dark.

Existing architectural elements including columns and beams – which were white for the brand's Spring Summer 2015 catwalk, also by AMO – are painted black.

Prada and OMA have a longstanding relationship. The companies haves worked together for over 25 years as a result of a friendship between their founders, Koolhaas and Miuccia Prada.

Previous catwalk designs for the fashion house include a series of linked symmetrical vestibules for Autumn Winter 2015 and an installation of translucent sheets suspended above concrete seating for Spring Summer 2016.

Other projects have encompassed store interiors, furniture collections, a shape-shifting cultural pavilion, and a 1990s-style nightclub to host a one-off event during Paris' Haute Couture fashion week in July 2015.

Photography is by Agostino Osio, courtesy of OMA, unless otherwise stated.

Project credits:

Design: AMO
Team: Giacomo Ardesio, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (Partner), Giulio Margheri

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A "timeless ruin" covered in reflective materials was installed across the runway at Italian brand Miu Miu's Paris fashion show by Dutch studio AMO (+ slideshow).

AMO – the research arm of OMA – continued its collaboration with fashion designer Miuccia Prada to create the set design for her Miu Miu brand's presentation during Paris Fashion Week on Wednesday.

The show took place in the hypostyle hall of the Art Deco Palais d'Iena, designed by French architect August Perret in 1937.

Among the building's rows of columns, AMO installed a giant structure that snaked through the space and was punctured with angled arches.

"For the 2016 SS Miu Miu show AMO invades the monumental architecture of August Perret's Palais d'Iena in Paris with a timeless ruin, introducing a dramatic counterpart to the rigorous linearity of the Palais," said the studio.

Beginning at the grand staircase at one end of the room, the arches spanned back and forth across the space. Models paraded along a route created through the gaps and between the columns.

"The volume, embedded in the hypostyle, is carved following the model's path," AMO said. "Concealing and revealing the columns, an organic dialogue is established with the existing architecture."

Gold and silver-coloured materials with varying textures and mirrored qualities were used to cover the entire structure.

"The complex geometry of the installation is clad with a set of industrial reflective materials amplifying its extraneous presence to the surrounding environment," said AMO.

Spectators were arranged in lines around the edges of the space, seated on modest wooden chairs.

"The audience is organised linearly along the perimeter of the hypostyle facing the constant changing relationship between the Palais, the injected architecture and the fashion," said AMO.

"Based on this concentric organisation, the show unfolds around the brutal volume that becomes both path and background for the models."

AMO created a pop-up nightclub in Paris for Miu Miu earlier this year, and has also designed the Milan catwalks for sister brand Prada.

Larger projects created as part of the ongoing collaboration include the Fondazione Prada arts centre in the Italian city, which opened in May and features a bar by Wes Anderson.

Although Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron was chosen to design Miu Miu's box-like store in Tokyo's Aoyama district.

The Spring Summer 2016 edition of Paris Fashion Week, which took place from 29 September to 7 October 2015, also featured Hussein Chalayan's catwalk shower that dissolved a pair of soluble outfits and Akris' collection inspired by Sou Fujimoto.

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The research arm of Dutch studio OMA created a 1990s-style nightclub in Paris to host a one-off event for fashion brand Miu Miu (+ slideshow).

AMO's Miu Miu Club hosted a dinner, a fashion show and several musical acts within the 1937 Palais d'Iena – a Neoclassical-style building in Paris originally designed by French architect Auguste Perret, who specialised in using reinforced concrete. The structure currently houses government offices.

The Miu Miu event took place on Saturday 4 July 2015, the night before the city's haute-couture fashion week for the Autumn Winter 2015 season kicked off.

Borrowing cues from 1990s nightclubs, the AMO design "referenced an underground and industrial atmosphere with strip lighting, metal grids, and PVC sheets".

The Rotterdam studio – which also designed the set for Prada's menswear show in Milan last month – built a temporary scaffolding structure around the sides of the room.

Miu Miu is the nickname of Italian fashion designer Miuccia Prada, who set up an offshoot brand with the same name in 1993 as a platform for explorations beyond her main Prada collections.

The Miu Miu logo was emblazoned above the entrance to the space in neon lights, while further tube lighting was attached to the structure's metal poles.

Dining tables were located beneath the metal beams, which supported a platform that was used as a catwalk to present clothes from the Miu Miu line.

A dance floor in the centre of the room faced a DJ booth, backed by a light-up wall that illuminated in time with the music.

AMO and sister studio OMA have a longstanding relationship with the Prada group, having worked together for 25 years as a result of a friendship between their founders – architect Rem Koolhaas and Miuccia Prada.

Catwalks designed by the architects for the fashion house include a series of linked symmetrical vestibules and a runway that floated on a blue pool, while other projects have encompassed store interiors, furniture collections and even a portable, shape-shifting cultural pavilion.

OMA also recently completed the Fondazione Prada – a new arts centre inside a former distillery in Milan that opened in May 2015.

However Herzog & de Meuron was chosen to design Miu Miu's new store in Tokyo, which opened earlier this year.

Paris' Haute Couture fashion week continues until 9 July 2015.

Photography is by Agostino Osio, courtesy of OMA, unless otherwise stated.

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OMA's research arm AMO hung translucent sheets above concrete seating for Italian fashion house Prada's Spring Summer 2016 fashion show (+ slideshow).

The Prada menswear catwalk presentation, which also featured looks from the pre-spring womenswear collection, took place on Sunday at the Via Fogazzaro show space in Milan.

AMO – the research branch of Dutch architecture firm OMA – continued its longstanding collaboration with Prada to design the Indefinite Hangar installation for the runway set during Milano Moda Uomo, the city's men's fashion week.

The cavernous room inside the old factory building was transformed by suspending vertical translucent sheets from the ceiling.

The smooth fibreglass and corrugated polycarbonate surfaces were fixed at 90-degree angles to each other, or curved into partial tubes using metal framework.

"Plastic sheets hang down acting as a virtual mould that defines the catwalk and seating areas, while the concrete ground area acts as the negative of the above scene," said AMO.

The semi-transparent materials diffused and reflected the glow from ceiling-mounted spotlights.

"The fibreglass and polycarbonate stalactites manipulate the proportions and perspectives of the brutal and industrial space," AMO said. "These alternating levels of views and transparencies introduce the guests to a blurred horizon."

Elliptical seating areas comprising concentric rows of arc-shaped benches were covered in concrete to match the floor and walls of the existing space.

"The wall, floor and seats, covered in concrete, emerge as a remnant, disturbing the boundaries between seating and catwalk," said AMO.

The catwalk circled the central seating area, with models also passing extra benches for guests positioned around the outside.

OMA and AMO have worked with Prada for over 25 years as a result of a personal relationship between their founders – architect Rem Koolhaas and fashion designer Miuccia Prada.

Previous catwalks designed for the fashion house include a series of linked symmetrical vestibules and a runway that floated on a blue pool, while other projects have included store interiors, furniture collections and even a portable, shape-shifting cultural pavilion.

OMA recently completed the Fondazione Prada – a new arts centre inside a former distillery in Milan that opened in May 2015.

The building is designed to host a cultural programme that includes temporary art and sculpture exhibitions, film screenings and philosophical discussion. It contains a "haunted house" clad in 24-carat gold leaf and a cinema camouflaged by mirrors, as well as a bar designed by director Wes Anderson.

Milano Moda Uomo runs from 19 to 23 June. London's batch of Spring Summer 2016 menswear shows occurred earlier this month, when a series of presentations took place at a space illuminated with lights projected through perforated boxes. After Milan, this season of men's fashion shows will move on to Paris before finishing in New York in July.

Photograph is by Alberto Moncada, courtesy of OMA, unless specified otherwise.

Project credits:

Team: Giacomo Ardesio, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (Partner), Kate Lee, Giulio Margheri, Salome Nikuradze, Miguel Taborda

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News: Prada's art foundation has announced its new venue by OMA's research arm AMO will open this May, featuring a bar designed by film director Wes Anderson.

Scheduled to welcome visitors on 9 May, the Fondazione Prada will be located on a Milanese industrial site at Largo Isarco – south of Milan's city centre and away from the brand's headquarters.

Led by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and first revealed in 2008, AMO's design includes 11,000 square metres of exhibition space intended to "expand the repertoire of spatial typologies in which art can be exhibited and shared with the public".

Seven preexisting buildings of a 1910s former distillery will be linked by three new structures – an exhibition venue, an auditorium and a museum tower – occupying the courtyard spaces in between.

The complex will host Fondazione Prada's array of events, relating to disciplines including cinema, design, architecture, philosophy, fashion and performance.

The entrance building will connect to a children's area designed by students from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Versailles, and the bar modelled on traditional Milan cafes by director Wes Anderson – who is best known for films including The Life Aquatic and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The foundation is being moved from its current location at Via Fogazzaro 36, which earlier this week hosted Prada's menswear show in a space designed by AMO.

Prada has an ongoing relationship with OMA that goes back 25 years. The two companies have previous collaborated on a series of store interiors, catwalk designs and exhibition spaces, including the Prada Transformer in Seoul.

Fondazione Prada was founded by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli in 1993 as a non-profit organisation focussed on contemporary art.

The organisation's Venetian venue will continue to operate in the 18th century Palazzo Ca' Corner della Regina. The two locations are set to host concurrent exhibitions of ancient art from Prada's collection this summer.

"Both projects, whose display system has been conceived by OMA, analyse the themes of seriality and the copy in classical art and the reproduction of small-scale Greek and Roman sculptures from the Renaissance to Neoclassicism, respectively," said Fondazione Prada in a statement.

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Dutch studio OMA's research branch AMO has created a series of symmetrical linked vestibules to form a disorientating runway for Prada's Autumn Winter 2015 menswear show (+ slideshow).

As with previous seasons, architect Rem Koolhaas' interiors-focused studio designed the set for Italian fashion house Prada's latest presentation, which took place yesterday as part of Milan Moda Uomo – the city's men's fashion week.

AMO divided a space inside the Fondazione Prada at Via Fogazzaro 36 into a series of interconnected rooms in two lines side by side, each with slightly different proportions.

"The existing room is disguised into a classic enfilade of rooms, gradually changing proportions as in an abstract mannerist perspective," said a statement from the studio.

"As opposed to a single stage, the new sequence of spaces multiplies and fragments the show into a series of intimate moments."

Named The Infinite Palace, the layout formed a route that models followed up along one side and returned down the other.

"The progression through the connected rooms simulates endless repetitions and symmetries, while providing the illusion of an infinite palace," said the studio.

"As the models move linearly across the enfilade the audience, divided into small groups, are pushed to close and intimate proximity with the collection."

Each of the spaces was linked by an aluminium mesh-clad tunnel, brightly illuminated from behind with vertical tube lights to contrast with the darker, larger rooms.

These chambers and tunnels became smaller and tighter in succession towards the back of the space.

Mesh panels were also installed across the ceilings in the faux marble-lined rooms to obscure the lighting fixtures above.

Textured metal sheets were laid on the floor to form geometric shapes in the centre of each room.

"Blue and black (false) marble cover the floors and walls transforming each space into a tridimensional excavation," the studio said. "In this disorientating landscape aluminium geometric inserts in the ground mark the sequence of spaces."

The audience sat on tiered benches arranged in the corners of the dark space, observing the collection that aimed to highlight gender differences and similarities.

Both male and female models walked during the menswear show, wearing Prada's predominantly black and minimal garments for this season.

Prada has been working with OMA for 25 years on designs for the brand's catwalks and store interiors. Previous projects include a runway that floated on a blue pool for Spring Summer 2015 and a range of angular furniture used for the Autumn Winter 2013 set.

Despite the ongoing collaboration with Koolhaas' studio, the fashion house enlisted designer Martino Gamper to design its latest shop windows – revealed earlier this month.

Photography by Alberto Moncada, unless otherwise stated.

Project credits:

Team: Cedric van Parys, Giacomo Ardesio, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (Partner), Miguel Taborda

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Architect Rem Koolhaas's studio AMO created a runway surrounded by water for fashion house Prada's Spring Summer 2015 collection shown in Milan on Sunday.

Koolhaas' Rotterdam-based AMO research studio designed the floating catwalk and setting for the Prada show, describing the space as "in between a cave, a cruise ship, and an indoor pool".

"The set up questions the relationship between outdoor and indoor: water invades the space, redefining the existing elements, changing proportions, reflecting unexpected point of views, augmenting the show," said project leader Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli.

Models walked around a rectangular platform covered in a tan-coloured carpet, which appeared to hover above the surface of the bright blue water.

The structure was attached to the perimeter at one end, where models walked on an off.

A row of arched structural columns ran through the centre of the space and a band of white lights were mounted on the walls to light the room.

Bleachers that surrounded the pool were wrapped in the same carpet as the catwalk, providing seating for the audience.

Guests had to climb over the top of these steps before taking their seats, presenting them with an elevated view of the environment.

The Prada Spring Summer 2015 show took place on 22 June as part of Milan Moda Uomo - men's fashion week.

Rem Koolhaas and AMO have been working closely with Prada for a number of years, creating a portable, shape-shifting cultural pavilion for the company in 2009 and a range of angular furniture to furnish the runway show for its Autumn Winter 2013 menswear collection.

Prada's Spring Summer 2014 collection scooped the top prize in the fashion category at Designs of the Year 2014.

Photography is by Alberto Moncada, copyright OMA.

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AMO, the research arm of Office for Metropolitan Architecture, recently unveiled their design for new experimental and exhibition spaces for the Prada Art Foundation near Milan.

The development will involve transforming an early 20th-century industrial site south of Milan and adding an exhibition building, auditorium and museum tower to the existing seven structures.

The complex will accommodate events dedicated to cinema, design, architecture, philosophy, fashion and performance, as well as housing selections of works from the Prada Foundation collection. Above image © AMO*OMA

“We plan to add three new structures that vastly extend the range of its facilities and accommodations” says Rem Koolhaas of OMA. “The new Foundation is intended as a collection of artifacts that encounters several architectural typologies. Above image © AMO*OMA

"Not only will the range of spatial conditions be extended, but also the range of contents itself: apart from spaces for assembly and performance, both Prada’s and Luna Rossa’s archives will be opened, establishing a continuity of creative and intellectual effort

Above image © AMO*OMA

Photographs by Roberto Marossi, courtesy of Fondazione Prada unless otherwise credited.
Here's some text from the Prada Foundation:
--
Unveiling the Prada Foundation
AMO, the think-tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) was commissioned by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli to design the intervention on and transformation of an early 20th -century industrial site south of Milan to create new experimental spaces for the Prada Art Foundation.

The total exhibition space of 17,500 m2 will comprise 7,500 m2 of an existing industrial complex and approximately 10,000 m2 of new buildings. The complex will house the Foundation’s different events, which will be dedicated to disciplines ranging from cinema to design, architecture to philosophy, and fashion to performance. It will further include a permanent exhibition space for displaying the result of more than 15 years of the Foundation’s activities in the form of large-scale installations.

The Prada Foundation’s new art centre and permanent exhibition space is situated in a location that includes buildings dating from 1910 belonging to one of Milan's first manufacturing companies. Preserved in their original conditions, there are seven different existing structures of warehouses, laboratories and brewing silos surrounded by a large courtyard.

AMO’s project adds an exhibition building, an auditorium and a museum tower to the existing structure to house selections of works from the collection. The project’s unique approach includes the idea of the co-existence of contemporary architecture with the regeneration of an historic area, representing the evolution of the industrial development of Milan that continues to the present day.

The project is lead by Rem Koolhaas with Alexander Reichert and is the latest in a series of OMA-AMO Prada collaborations that have resulted in the epicenter stores, catwalks for fashion shows, exhibitions and T-Shirt designs.

Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli founded the Prada Foundation in 1993, with the artistic direction of Germano Celante beginning in 1995. The Foundation is a non-profit organization, generated by passion for contemporary art.

Since its inception, the Foundation has commissioned and produced special installations in close collaboration with artists such as among others Anish Kapoor, Marc Quinn, Carsten Höller, and Thomas Demand.

Above photograph by Frans Parthesius, © OMA

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AMO and Prada have launched Prada Prototypes, an online auction of limited-edition Prada garments and accessories.

AMO is the think-tank wing of Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). The twin organisations have completed numerous projects for Prada in the past, including the design of the Prada Epicentre stores in New York and Los Angeles.

More info from AMO below:

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(Milan, 10 July, 2007) AMO, the think-tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has completed the newest component of the Prada.com website - an online auction,of exclusive collectible pieces by the Prada fashion house.

The auction website lets bidders personalize the process by allowing them to include information about themselves, photo, or links to their websites. Bidders can also track the bid history of individual pieces through a graphic chart.

The ‘Prada Prototypes’ auction features 24 pieces including dresses, skirts, bags and shoes all hand-selected by Ms. Miuccia Prada. Initially created for the catwalk, the pieces have never appeared or been produced with the specific colour or material and some pieces have been made specifically for the auction.

The Prototypes auction is open to anyone over 18 from almost any location in the world. Visitors to the site have seven days to bid on the one-off Prada pieces with 3 items being auctioned every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Proceeds of the digital event will be donated to the Fondazione Areté Onlus San Raffaele a hospital and medical research centre in Milan, Italy.

The ‘Prada Prototypes’ auction website is a continuation of the long-term collaboration between AMO and Prada. In early 2002 while OMA worked on the design of Prada Epicentre stores in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, AMO worked on creating PRADA’s in store information technology and media content.

Most recently AMO has been responsible for the design of all the catwalk fashion shows for both Prada and Miu Miu labels and the filming and editing of the behind the scenes movies of these shows. This year AMO created Prada’s America’s Cup launch event at Mercado Central of Valencia, Spain and designed the Obvious Classics #1 line of t-shirts.

In 2004 AMO began a series of exhibitions in Tokyo, titled ‘Waist-Down Miuccia Prada: Art and Creativity’ which have since travelled to Shanghai, New York and Los Angeles and in 2005 AMO began the development of Prada’s online presence with the Prada Parfums websites which included the websites and the ‘making-of’ movies of the campaigns.

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AMO, the think-tank arm of Office for Metropolitan Architecture, has announced a collaboration with the Hermitage State Museum (above) in St Petersburg, Russia, to develop a new museum typology for the 21st Century.

The masterplanning project will explore ways of making the vast, historic museum relevant to contemporary audiences while avoiding the now-standard approach of using iconic architecture to flag up the institution's renewal.

A spokesperson for AMO told us:

"The project centers on the question of the Hermitage’s current institutional status and the dilemma of its perpetual modernization in the wake of a globalised and technologically-infused age, utilizing the Hermitage as a prototype for ‘the museum of the 21st Century’.

"By devising a curatorial masterplan, AMO aims to revitalize the museum without surrendering the conventional need to preserve its artifacts as well as the integrity of its unequivocal past. As a critical part of AMO’s masterplan, another objective is also to address the Hermitage’s ever-evolving relationship with the city of St. Petersburg."

A full statement from AMO follows:

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The Museum of the 21st Century: Curatorial Master Plan for the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Do all museums have to adhere to the same technical conditions? Do all museums have to be extended and updated? Or can a certain amount of inaction, a certain resistance to change, actually be instrumental in maintaining a degree of the authenticity so frequently erased during the process of modernisation?

Summary

The State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg and the think tank AMO, part of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), would like to pursue a collaborative project on the future of the 21st-Century museum. The joint effort will be to define the Hermitage as a new prototype for the museum in the 21st-Century.

The enormity of the Hermitage collection, combined with the extensive number of rooms, has created a scale, complexity and an organisation that approach urbanism. In urban design, a master plan gives an overall direction to the development and renovation of cities. For this reason, the Hermitage and AMO will develop, as part of this cultural project, a Curatorial Master Plan, which will focus on the intersection between the needs to modernise and to preserve the museum’s approach to art and historic preservation.

Rather than a confident imposition of the new, the task at hand is to find those changes that will allow the Hermitage in a discreet way, without being too manifest, to function better. The central issue at stake in this project is how to modernise the State Hermitage Museum while accepting one of Russia’s great legacies on its own terms. The Hermitage will be examined as a whole: its functioning as a museum, its future position and its integral participation in the City of St. Petersburg.

The results of this project will be shared with an international audience through a kick off meeting, an international conference, an exhibition both in St Petersburg and The Netherlands, and an international publication.

Context

Past systems have – each in a particular way – safeguarded the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg from ‘drastic modernisations’. So far, its original aim, to show art, has been maintained. The museum still constitutes a unique condition with a more direct and more authentic approach to art than in more upgraded encyclopaedic museums.

Of all the great museums, the Hermitage sustains the largest collection, the largest number of exhibitions, and the most space with the least number of visitors. In comparison to other great museums, the Hermitage’s commercial activities are reduced to a minimum. This provides an opportunity to establish the Hermitage’s global position by distinguishing it from other world-class museums. Bearing in mind commitment to its original intentions, the Hermitage must adapt to changing times as it prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2014. With its reputation untainted, the museum can now focus on its strengths - its virtually priceless and limitless collection, its scale, and its non-commercial character. With this unique history, it can be the first major museum in the 21st-Century to proclaim a renewed focus on art.

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is a leading international partnership practicing contemporary architecture, urbanism and cultural analysis. The office is lead by six partners: Rem Koolhaas, Ole Scheeren, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Floris Alkemade and Managing Partner Victor van der Chijs. To accommodate a wide range and diversity of projects throughout the world, OMA maintains offices in Europe (OMA Rotterdam), North America (OMA New York) and Asia (OMA Beijing).

The counterpart to OMA’s architectural practice is AMO, a research studio and think tank that operates in areas beyond the boundaries of architecture and urbanism - including sociology, technology, media and politics.

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Update 20/06/07: our friends at UnBeige have pointed out that AMO were working with the Hermitage a few years back (indeed, the collaboration features in Koolhaas' 2004 book Content). But the "new" news is that the collaboration has been restarted and the "curatorial masterplan" will begin this September.

AMO have given us the following additional information:

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History

Between 2000 and 2001, OMA/AMO was commissioned to act as a consultant for The Guggenheim Hermitage and Guggenheim Las Vegas project. The program called for a flexible exhibition space and museum store, housing masterworks from the Guggenheim and Hermitage Museums in The Venetian Hotel-Casino-Resort in Las Vegas.

The initial Hermitage project

After a meeting with the director of the State Hermitage of St. Petersburg, Mikhail Piotrovsky, OMA/AMO was invited to generate an architectural concept for the General Staff Building, then a new acquisition for the museum. The General Staff Building comprised of 806 rooms all with different morphologies and in various states of restoration. This project involved a curatorial component which enabled the various collections of the Hermitage to be viewed in an unconventional way - by imbedding the artworks within the existing typology of the General Staff Building and allowing the audience to circulate freely within the rooms, carving out their own respective routes. In addition to the curatorial program, there was also an architectural component in which the lobby of the General Staff Building was created. OMA/AMO’s research from this project eventually resulted in an exhibition in Moscow as well as AMO’s ‘Expansion and Neglect’ Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

‘The Museum of the 21st Century: A Curatorial Masterplan for the State Hermitage Museum’

After the initial Hermitage project was completed in 2005, Piotrovsky once again approached AMO and proposed a new collaboration based on the strategies which were formulated for the previous project – but on a much larger scale. This time AMO would be responsible for introducing new exhibition concepts and new strategic thinking for the whole Hermitage complex including the General Staff Building. In this particular project dubbed ‘The Museum of the 21st Century: A Curatorial Masterplan for the State Hermitage Museum’, AMO is currently devising a Curatorial Masterplan which aims to revitalize the Hermitage’s relationship with St. Petersburg as well as to uncover the fine line between modernization and preservation of the museum – without any kind of architectural intervention.

Update 22/06/07: certain sensitive passages in the text supplied by AMO has been removed at their request.

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