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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Fashion house Prada has teamed up with commercial space company Axiom Space to create lunar spacesuits for NASA's Artemis III mission, which will be the first crewed moon landing since 1972.

Called Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), the suits will be designed to give astronauts "advanced capabilities for space exploration," Prada said.

They are an evolution of NASA's Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) spacesuit design and will use "innovative technologies and design" to be more flexible and provide more protection against the harsh lunar environment, according to the brand.

Prada will work together with Axiom Space's systems team to create the lunar spacesuits, which will be used for Artemis III, the first crewed lunar landing since December 1972.

Artemis III will also be the first mission to place a woman on the moon.

The lunar spacesuits will feature specialised tools for exploration and scientific work and give NASA commercially developed systems to let people work and live on the moon.

"The constantly forward-thinking ethos of Prada for humanity has broadened to his desire of adventure and to brave new horizons: space," Prada Group marketing director Lorenzo Bertelli said.

"We are honored to be a part of this historic mission with Axiom Space," he added. "Our decades of experimentation, cutting-edge technology and design know-how – which started back in the 1990s with Luna Rossa challenging for the America's cup – will now be applied to the design of a spacesuit for the Artemis era."

The collaboration marks "the first groundbreaking partnership between an Italian luxury fashion house and a commercial space company, Axiom Space," Prada said.

"We are thrilled to partner with Prada on the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit," said Michael Suffredini, CEO of Axiom Space.

"Prada's technical expertise with raw materials, manufacturing techniques, and innovative design concepts will bring advanced technologies instrumental in ensuring not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface, but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy spacesuits."

NASA is currently working with a number of companies on its space missions. American entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX has won a NASA contract to design a moon lander, while tyre-maker Goodyear is creating airless tyres for a future lunar vehicle.

The space agency has also tapped Bjarke Ingels' studio BIG and construction technology company ICON to create Mars Dune Alpha, a 3D-printed structure designed to simulate living on Mars.

The photography is courtesy of Axiom Space.

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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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Fashion house Prada has opened the Prada Caffè in luxury department store Harrods, which has an interior that is blanketed in the brand's signature green hue and mirrors one of Milan's oldest patisseries.

Located at the corner of Hans Road in London, the Prada Caffè is accessed via a mint green latticed storefront that complements Harrods's Edwardian baroque terracotta facade.

The interior of the pop-up cafe draws on the interior of Pasticceria Marchesi, a Milanese patisserie that opened in 1824, which has similar pale-green interiors that are paired with green velvet-upholstered soft furnishings.

At Prada Caffè, the walls, ceilings and furniture – including booth seating, plush armchairs and architectural elements – were hued in a minty green referred to as Prada green, a colour that has become synonymous with the brand.

A large marble countertop, decorated with textural, pebbled panelling at its base, is located at the entrance to the cafe and used to display Prada-branded patisseries that are presented like individual pieces of jewellery.

The floors of the space were clad in black and white-checkered floor tiles in a nod to the floors of the Prada boutique located in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

Floral reliefs and mouldings cover the walls and ceilings of the cafe, which the brand explained aims to evoke the look of Prada stores worldwide.

A mezzanine level, supported by green columns, is decorated with bowed balustrades and used as an elevated seating area overlooking the marble-wrapped patisserie counter.

At the rear of the cafe, a secluded room continues the interior scheme. Here, green velvet booth seating surrounds the perimeter of the space beneath decorative floral relief walls.

Tableware was selected specifically for the cafe and ranges from blue-hued Japanese porcelain, informed by ancient Celadon pottery and decorated with contrasting black lines, to blown-glass crystalware.

To accompany the blown glassware and duck egg blue porcelain, silverware was engraved with Prada branding and features handle ends that are shaped like the brand's triangular logo.

The cafe will remain at Harrods until January 2024.

During Milan Fashion Week, Prada presented its Autumn Winter 2023 collection in the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada, which featured a moving and retractable ceiling.

Elsewhere in London, Ola Jachymiak Studio brightened a cafe in Notting Hill incorporating terracotta-tile floors and tangerine-hued walls.

The photography is courtesy of Prada.

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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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Social media brand Meta has announced plans to launch its Avatars Store, where users of its social media platforms can dress digital avatars in Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne clothing.

Avatars Store will be a digital marketplace where digital clothing will be sold for use across Meta's social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.

Users will be able to customise avatars across the platforms and purchase digital pixel clothing from luxury brands including Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne, as well as a number of creator-made items.

Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram's vice president of fashion partnerships announced on Instagram Live that the fashion brands would be partnering with Meta to launch digital versions of their clothes.

"Your avatar is a digital expression of your personality (or personalities)," said Meta. "It can convey how much of an extrovert or introvert you are, your sense of humor and even your fashion sense."

Users of the social media platforms will be able to dress their avatars in a motorcycle jacket, trousers and boots from Balenciaga's Autumn Winter 2020 show, a Prada logo-embellished tank top from its Autumn Winter 2022 show, and digital four-stripe Thom Browne suits.

User avatars for Meta's platforms were introduced in January 2022 and can be customised with free outfit options and accessories. The brand explained that free options will remain available.

Over time the Avatars Store will offer new options for avatars from fashion, sports and lifestyle brands that reflect current trends.

Companies and brands are quickly looking at ways to infiltrate the metaverse. Fashion brands including Balenciaga and Giuseppe Zanotti have previously released digital garments for use within the metaverse.

Earlier in 2022, virtual reality platform Decntraland launched Metaverse Fashion Week where brands including The Fabricant and Etro showcased collections digitally.

Images are courtesy of Meta.

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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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Artist Theaster Gates and fashion house Prada have revealed the inaugural cohort for their Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab, a three-year incubator programme aimed at supporting Black designers.

Announced in Chicago today, the 14 awardees were chosen by industry leaders including Gates, Prada Group founder Miuccia Prada, writer and director Ava Duvernay, late designer Virgil Abloh, and architect David Adjaye.

The designers and artists of colour were selected for demonstrating extraordinary achievements in their respective fields.

The majority are based in Chicago, including Damarr Brown, culinary arts; Maya Bird-Murphy, architecture; Brandon Breaux, fine art and design; Summer Coleman, graphic design; Catherine Sarr, fine jewellery design; Norman Teague, product design; and Kendall Reynolds, footwear.

Those based in New York include Kyle Abraham, dance; Yemi Amu, agriculture; and Salome Asega, art, technology and design. Architect Germane Barnes is from Miami, and visual artist Kenturah Davis is from Los Angeles.

London fashion designer Tolu Coker and Niamey architect Mariam Issoufou Kamara round out the cohort of creatives, who will each receive financial support to work on new or continuing projects.

After gathering as a group in Chicago last month, they will be given further opportunities to foster relationships with one another, as well as with global organisations and design leaders.

"For too long, there has been an evident pipeline and visibility barrier for designers of colour working across the creative industries, and the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab not only challenges the notion that Black talent is hard to identify, but also serves as an inescapable answer to it," said Gates, who is co-chair of Prada Group's Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council.

"I'm so proud of this cohort, and it is a tremendous honour to be able to celebrate, support, and amplify the work of these designers working to enrich our collective understanding of and interactions with design," he added.

Gates has worked extensively on regeneration and community arts projects in Chicago's South Side, his home neighbourhood, which has a predominately Black population.

These include the transformation of a derelict bank into a public arts centre, where the artist formally presented the cohort today, 5 April 2022, during a public conversation. He also founded Dorchester Industries as an artist-led manufacturing platform in the city.

Gates was named as the designer for this year's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, and recently revealed his proposal for the commission, the Black Chapel.

Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab is one of several initiatives set up over the past two years to promote and foster the development of Black designers, following the impactful rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

Others include the Diversity in Design collaborative, which held its inaugural youth design fair in Detroit last month, and First 500, an online platform dedicated to showcasing the work of Black women architects working in the US.

The photography is by Chris Strong, courtesy of Rebuild Foundation.

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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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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 Raf Simons has announced that he is becoming co-creative director of Italian label Prada, where he will work alongside Miuccia Prada.

The collaboration between Belgium-born Simons and Miuccia Prada – who has sat at the helm of Prada since 1978 – is said to come from "a deep reciprocal respect" between the two designers.

"It opens a new dialogue, between designers widely acknowledged as two of the most important and influential of today," said the brand in a statement.

"Conceptually, it is also a new approach to the very definition of creative direction for a fashion brand - a strong challenge to the idea of singularity of creative authorship."

Simons previously worked at Christian Dior and Calvin Klein

This isn't the first time that Simons has worked at a high-end fashion house. Since launching his self-titled menswear label in 1995, the designer served as creative director for Jil Sander between 2005-2012, before moving on to Christian Dior where he stayed until 2015.

The following year he moved to Calvin Klein, where he steered the brand's creative output until 2018.

In between the designer has also partnered with mainstream brands like Adidas, creating trainers inspired by vintage space suits, and luggage company Eastpak, for which he has produced a line of bags that nod to the aesthetics of sci-fi film Blade Runner.

Simons to bring "a different point of view"

Prada was founded in 1913 by the grandfather of Miuccia Prada, who has personally overseen the business for over four decades. The introduction of Simons is hoped to provide a fresh burst of innovation – a quality that the brand perceives as an "inherent facet" of its identity.

"As times change, so should creativity – the synergy of this partnership is far-reaching," Prada continued in its statement.

"It is a reaction to the era in which we live – an epoch with fresh possibilities, permitting a different point of view and approach to established methodologies."

Simons' move to Prada isn't the only change that the brand is set to undergo – last year, in a bid to be more eco-conscious, it announced plans to completely phase out the use of virgin nylon in the production of some of its bag models.

Prada has also recently procured a loan for £42.9 million from banking group Crédit Agricole, with repayment terms determined by whether the brand meets sustainability targets.

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London's Design Museum has unveiled its exhibition programme for 2020, with a major show about fashion brand Prada due to open in September.

The show, called Prada. Front and Back, is described as "the first major museum exhibition of one of the world's most influential fashion houses".

The exhibition will include input from architects Rem Koolhaas and Herzog and de Meuron, both of whom have collaborated with the brand.

Other shows announced are an exploration of electronic music called Electronic, which will open in April; and a survey of trainers called Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street, opening in June.Electronic will evoke "the experience of a being in a club" while the sneakers show will spotlight "cult classics, limited edition silhouettes and rare colourways".

Details of the programme have been released just as the museum surpassed its previous visitor record. It has attracted 229,360 visitors to its paid programme so far this financial year, which runs from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020.

This compares to the previous best of 228,960 in the financial year 2017/2018.

This is an improvement on the 2018/2019 financial year, when paying visitors fell last year to 183,392 visitors, putting pressure on the museum's finances, as Dezeen revealed last month.

The decline in ticket revenue contributed to a financial deficit, which saw the museum call in a £3 million loan from The Conran Foundation.

Lord Mandelson, the chair of the museum's board of trustees, described the financial situation as "not sustainable in the medium term" and blamed the fall in ticket sales on the "specialist focussed" exhibitions programme.

According to its latest annual report, the museum's long-term objective "is to be the most successful museum of contemporary design and architecture in the world, a point of reference for these global industries." It aims to attract "a broad audience of one million visitors annually."

Earlier this year the trustees appointed management consultants to propose ways to return the institution to profitability, and recruitment consultants were briefed to identify a business-savvy leader. Tim Marlow, currently artistic director at the Royal Academy of the Arts, will join the museum as CEO and director in the new year.

Outgoing museum director Deyan Sudjic said: "We are delighted to announce our 2020 programme, with a series of provocative exhibitions that will allow us to make the impact of design visible: from examining the technology and innovation that drive the sneaker industry to the transformation of our musical world through electronics."

"Through the prism of design visionaries such as Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron, we will tell Prada's remarkable story in fashion," added Sudjic, who is personally curating the Prada show.

The decision to dedicate an exhibition to a global fashion house follows the blockbuster success of fashion-related exhibitions such as Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition at the nearby V&A museum, which attracted a record 595,000 paying visitors.

The V&A's previous record was held by its 2015 show McQueen: Savage Beauty, which attracted 493,043 visitors.

The Design Museum's most popular show yet was this summer's Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition, which welcomed 169,000 paying visitors and was the reason for the record attendance figures this year.

The previous most popular show was 2017's Ferrari: Under the Skin, which received 100,000 visitors.

"Fashion has fascinated designers and architects since the days of Adolf Loos, who was constantly writing about the reasons that the Germans wore their trousers too short," Sudjic told Dezeen, when asked whether fashion exhibitions are more popular with the public than shows about industrial design or architecture.

"Fashion is about making, and designing and behaviour, as much as automotive design, or user experience," said Sudjic, who announced last month that he will will step down as director in the new year and become director emeritus.

"To draw artificial lines around subjects is missing the point. It's the textile industry that triggered the industrial revolution, and the digital world."

He added: "No company has done more to work with designers and architects of all kinds than Prada. They had IDEO look at their information systems before there was such a thing as a smartphone, Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron transformed the environment in which their clothes were sold. Prada has been consistently experimenting with new ideas and new materials."

Previous fashion exhibitions at the Design Museum include Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier in 2018; and Hello My Name Is Paul Smith, held in 2015, before the museum relocated to west London.

In 2016 the Design Museum moved from its former home at Shad Thames in east London to its new premises in the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, which has an interior designed by John Pawson.

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Prada has signed a £42.9 million loan with banking group Crédit Agricole, with repayment terms conditional to meeting key targets around the sustainability of its products and operations.

According to Prada – which also owns subsidiary brand Miu Miu – this marks the first time that a luxury brand has procured a sustainability-linked loan.

In these transactions, the lender's meeting of certain social and environmental goals is incentivised through the favourable or unfavourable adjustment of interest rates.

In this case, that means Prada's interest payments on the five-year loan will be determined annually based on whether the company has hit three specific objectives.

The first focuses on its physical shops, setting out that a certain number of them need to be certified gold or platinum according to the green-building rating system Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

This evaluates everything from the design and construction of a building to its management and the extent to which it uses resources and produces waste.

The other targets are related to the amount of training hours given to employees, and reinforce a pledge made by Prada earlier this year which involves phasing out the use virgin nylon by 2021.

Instead, a growing number of the brands' products – including a dedicated Re-Nylon collection of bags – are being made from Econyl, an infinitely recyclable yarn made from regenerated plastic waste.

Through the loan, this promise to use more Econyl is put against a numerical goalpost, meaning a certain percentage of the company's output will need to use the material in order to keep interest payments low.

The exact numbers that need to be hit is not fixed, but will become increasingly more demanding as the company's green capabilities increase.

According to Prada's chief financial officer Alessandra Cozzani, linking more sustainable business practices to concrete financial rewards is an attempt to engrain these values into the very functioning of the company.

"This transaction demonstrates that sustainability is a key element for the development of the Prada Group, increasingly integrated into our strategy," she explained in a statement.

Outside of the fashion industry, sustainability-linked loans have been on the rise, with the market growing eightfold over the course of a year to reach an estimated value of £31 billion in 2018.

For Prada, the loan forms part of a larger sustainability push, which also saw the company's third annual conference about the topic take place in New York last week.

With speakers including architect Sir David Adjaye and the dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Amale Andraos, the event explored how issues of social justice, not just environmental protection, play a part in sustainability.

Beyond substituting nylon, Prada has also gone fur-free, joining the rising tide of high-profile fashion houses, including Chanel and Gucci, that are switching to faux fur, although these are often made of plastic.

That's why elsewhere designers have been experimenting with substituting plastic in fashion altogether, instead creating a raincoat from algae and a parka from emulated spider silk.

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Italian fashion brand Prada has launched six bags made from regenerated nylon, as the first stage in its plan to phase out virgin nylon in the next two years called the ReNylon project.

Prada has announced that it will move away from virgin nylon in its collections by launching a collection of bags made from a regenerated nylon yarn called Econyl.

The six unisex bags that form the core collection of the ReNylon project are a belt bag, shoulder bag, tote bag, a duffle and two backpacks.

The company will replace all the virgin nylon it currently uses with Econyl recycled nylon in the next two years.

"Our ultimate goal will be to convert all Prada virgin nylon into ReNylon by the end of 2021," said head of communications at Prada, Lorenzo Bertelli.

Prada has collaborated with Italian textile yarn producer Aquafil on the project, a manufacturer with more than fifty years experience in producing synthetic textiles.

The resulting material, Econyl, is produced through a process of depolymerisation. It can be recycled an indefinite number of times with no loss of material quality.

Its capacity to be endlessly recycled makes it an example of a move towards a closed-loop system of producing nylon bags – a recycling approach that is central to the circular economy that involves ensuring materials can be reused again indefinitely to reduce waste.

To produce Econyl, Aquafil gathers plastic waste, including fishing nets, discarded nylon, used carpet and industrial waste. These are sorted and cleaned to maximise the quality of the end product.

A chemical de-polymerisation procedure is then used to reduce the nylon back to its original purity.

Production plants in Ljubljana, Slovenia and Arco, Italy realign the recycled material into polymer threads to produce the regenerated nylon material.

For the recent launch, the triangular Prada logo has been adapted from an upside-down triangle enclosing the company name and Milan, the city where it is based, to a triangular arrow to express the potential for endless recycling.

"[The logo is] a unique interpretation of the Prada triangular logo that emphasises a bucking of the traditional, age-old linear supply chain into a cyclical one, focused on renewal," said the company.

First launched in 1984, the black nylon bags were originally made from an industrial-weight nylon that was used to produce army tents. They were to become ubiquitous in the next decade, and spawned many copies.

The company described the decision to embrace recycled nylon as "a bold move towards total sustainability", and "an evolution of a fundamental code of Prada, a reinvention of heritage".

Earlier this year, Prada tasked three female architects with creating products from its black nylon resulting in a number of unusual garments that "flirt" with the function of bags and clothing.

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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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Prada has released a collection of bags envisioned by female architects, including a looping design by SANAA founder Kazuyo Sejima and a pair by Elizabeth Diller that "flirt" between luggage and garments.

The Italian label enlisted three designers for its Spring/Summer 2019 womenswear collection – along with Diller and Sejima, it also commissioned 94-year-old Italian architect Cini Boeri.

The collaboration, which is called Prada Invites, tasked each to create products from Prada's black nylon.

Diller, a partner at New York Diller Scofidio + Renfro, designed two prototype items from the fabric: The Envelope and The Yoke. Each is intended to merge the functions of a bag and clothing.

"The distinction between garments and accessories has always seemed odd to me," said Diller.

"Why are they considered, displayed and sold as two separate categories in two parts of the store? I love when the two have a bit more room to flirt and cross-pollinate," she continued. "Can luggage be worn? I'd like to change that paradigm."

The Envelope aims to transforms the traditional garment bag into a raincoat, to protect clothing while on the move.

The coat comprises a curved top and thick metal zips to slip clothing inside. Two buckles, placed on the front and back, can be used to cinch it in at the waste when worn as a coat.

The Yoke, meanwhile, features similar detailing, and either be used as a backpack, or folded up into a clutch bag.

To suit these two purposes, the item is cut into a U-shape comprising two small zip-bags and one larger one. The pockets are intended for carrying a range of items like "sketchpads, sandwiches and lipstick", according to Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

When worn as a backpack, the two mini pockets rest in front of the shoulders and are joined by a buckle. The longer pocket sits on the back. The wearer can then fold The Yoke in half and use the buckle strap as a handle.

Sejima's bag similarly loops around the shoulders, with two large, detachable zip pockets at each end. The user can take these extra pockets off and carry the bag with a pair of handles coloured blue and pink.

The Japanese architect also designed a set of playful pockets to added extra details to the bag. These come in various hues like yellow and white, and different shapes.

Boeri's design uses the fabric to create a more traditional, over-the-shoulder bag.

The 2019 Prada Invites collaboration follows on from the 2018 edition, in which architects Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and designers Konstantin Grcic, and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec all contributed pieces to the brand's Autumn Winter menswear collection.

This year the brand picked leading female architects to contribute to its womenswear.

Diller and her New York firm, which she co-founded in 1981, has completed a number of large-scale projects in recent years, such as the High Line, The Shed and an 88-storey skyscraper at Hudson Yards.

Diller has also been recognised in her own right. Earlier this year, she was named as the winner of the Jane Drew Prize for women in architecture and in 2018 she was listed as the only architect on the Time 100 list.

Sejima founded her firm SANAA with her partner Ryue Nishizawa in 1995. The two were awarded the Pritzker Prize – the architecture profession's highest accolade – in 2010.

SANAA has a number of well-known works in its portfolio, including the New Museum in New York and the Grace Farms Nature Reserve in Connecticut.

Boeri, who was born in 1924, established her eponymous firm in Milan in 1963 after working with celebrated Italian architect and designers Gio Pont and Marco Zanuso.

The firm works across the fields of architecture, interior design and industrial design, with projects including an apartment in Trump Tower, showrooms for furniture brand Knoll, and designs for lighting company Artemide.

Boeri's son, Stefano, is also a well-regarded architect in his own right. He is best-known for his plant-covered architecture, which include two towers in Milan, called Bosco Verticale, or Vertical Forest, as well as proposals for Albania, China and Mars.

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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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A room filled with giant spinning mushrooms and a set of bright yellow-green bathrooms are among the surprises found inside the OMA-designed Torre, which opened last week as the final part of the Fondazione Prada arts complex in Milan.

The white concrete structure that towers over the converted industrial site in the south of the city began welcoming the public from 20 April 2018, coinciding with this year's Milan design week.

It marks the completion of the arts centre, which architecture firm OMA's Rem Koolhaas, Chris van Duijn and Federico Pompignoli have overseen with fashion brand Prada founder Miuccia Prada.

The first groups to explore the newly opened portion have been treated to works by some of the world's best-known contemporary artists, and were able to explore the building's quirky interior spaces.

Entering from a plaza, past a row of thin transparent columns, visitors are faced with giant elevator doors. Inside, the lift is half lined in marbled pink, while the other half is almost entirely glazed.

This enables panoramic view across the complex's tiled roofs and instantly recognisable gold building, once the box emerges from a diagonal shaft that supports the tower.

On the top of the 60-metre-high tower is a roof deck that offers even better views across the city, and features mirrored balustrades, a black and white floor, and is equipped with a bar for hosting events.

Below, gallery spaces with pale wood floors and white walls occupy six of the building's nine levels. Some are rectangular in plan, while others have a trapezoidal shape.

"Together these variations produce a radical diversity within a simple volume – so that the interaction between the spaces and specific events or works of art offers an endless variety of conditions," said Koolhaas.

The ceiling heights increase from bottom to top, from 2.7 metres on the first floor to eight metres on the top level.

Artists represented in the Torre's debut exhibition sequence, titled Atlas, include Jeff Koons, Walter De Maria, Damien Hirst and John Baldessari.

"The group of exhibited artworks, realised between 1960 and 2016, represents a possible mapping of the ideas and visions which have guided the creation of the collection and the collaborations with the artists that have contributed to the activities of the foundation throughout the years," said a statement from the foundation.

Highlights include two combined installation works by Carsten Höller from 2000. Visitors traverse his pitch-black Gantenbein Corridor, using a handrail for guidance, before emerging into the pink Upside Down Mushroom Room. Inside, giant artificial mushrooms of various shapes and sizes hang from the ceiling and spin around at different speeds.

Connecting the gallery levels are a pair of parallel staircases that pass each other in opposite directions, separated by glass walls. Undersides of handrails are illuminated by hidden tracks of lighting, while the gridded landing walls glow with a pinkish tint.

Other spaces in the tower include a restaurant, also called Torre, on the sixth floor. The Italian eatery is furnished with pieces obtained at last year's auction of items from Philip Johnson's Four Seasons restaurant in New York, elements of Höller's 2008-2009 The Double Club installation in London, and various other artworks.

The restaurant also opens onto a terrace, formed by a triangular slice cut from the building's rectangular form.

The building's most decorative interiors are its bathrooms. Close to the top, deep red tones are used inside the lavatories. Meanwhile, the mirror-clad cloakroom towards the base of the tower conceals washrooms with bright chartreuse walls and black fixtures.

The Fondazione Prada was launched in 1993, as an organisation dedicated to cinema, design, architecture, philosophy, fashion and performance. The creation of its home involved the renovation of seven industrial buildings, formerly used as a distillery, and the creation of three new ones – including the Torre.

The complex opened its doors in 2015, and has been credited by critics and designers with helping to transform Milan's cultural scene.

OMA was an obvious choice for the project, as the firm and Prada have a longstanding relationship that goes back over 25 years. The architecture studio has completed a handful of store interiors for the fashion brand, as well as multiple set designs for its catwalk shows.

Installation photography is by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti.

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OMA has added another building to its Fondazione Prada complex in Milan, a white concrete tower that will showcase a collection of contemporary art.

Torre is the last of three new buildings that Rem Koolhaas' firm has added to the former distillery compound where the Fondazione Prada art centre is located, in Largo Isarco, southern Milan.

Koolhaas and colleagues Chris van Duijn and Federico Pompignoli renovated seven of the old distillery buildings – which date back to 1910 – and built a new cinema and exhibition gallery, ahead of the centre's opening back in 2015.

Torre was still under construction at that time, but will open to the public for the first time on 20 April 2018.

With a height of 60 metres, the white concrete tower has an irregular geometry that makes it appear to shift in shape when viewed from different angles.

"Its rectangular plan is constructed on a wedge-shaped site, on the northwest corner of the Fondazione; the tower consists of alternating blocks of wedge-shaped-plans and rectangular floors that are cantilevered over Milan's public space," explained Koolhaas.

The building contains nine floors, offering 2,000 square metres of extra floor space to the facility. Six of these floors are given over to exhibition galleries, displaying art works and installations by 20th and 21st century Italian and international artists from Prada's collection.

The other three floors house visitor facilities, a restaurant and a 160-square-metre rooftop terrace bar, offering panoramic views over the city.

A combination of large windows and angular slots carved out of the concrete allow light to reach the gallery spaces from all directions. As visitors ascend through the building, ceiling heights increase, ranging from 2.7 to eight metres at the topmost floor.

"To extend the typologies offered by the Fondazione, a series of systematic variations is applied: each next floor is taller than the previous one, rectangular plans alternate with wedge shapes, the orientation of the rooms alternates between panoramic city views to the north, or narrower views in opposite directions, east and west," said Koolhaas.

"Together these variations produce a radical diversity within a simple volume – so that the interaction between the spaces and specific events or works of art offer an endless variety of conditions."

On the south side of the tower is a ladder-like structural element made from a mix of iron and concrete, described by Koolhaas as a staircase. This visually connects Torre to Deposito – a warehouse-like structure next door.

"The staircase is the one element unifying all irregularities – its complexity lifts it beyond the typical pragmatic element, the staircase has become a highly charged architectural element," added Koolhaas.

A wide slot cut through the top of this angular structure allows the exterior glass elevator to pass through, giving visitors wide-ranging views of the compound and the city stretching out below them.

Koolhaas, who co-founded OMA in 1975, has had a long-term relationship with Prada. He has designed a number of projects for the Italian fashion house over the years, including catwalk sets, window installations and a shape-shifting pavilion.

Prada launched its foundation in 1993, as a cultural organisation dedicated to cinema, design, architecture, philosophy, fashion and performance – and OMA was the obvious choice to design it.

The complex officially opened in May 2015, with highlights including the "haunted house" clad in 24-carat gold leaf and the cinema camouflaged by mirrors.

Koolhaas also recently completed another project for Prada – he designed a bag for the brand's Autumn Winter 2018 menswear collection.

Photography by Bas Princen.

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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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Belgian artist Carsten Höller has designed a pop-up nightclub in Miami for fashion brand Prada, where indoor and outdoor spaces have very different identities.

The Prada Double Club Miami in the arty Wynwood district is open for three nights during the Art Basel fair and host of other events like Design Miami across the city this week.

Höller has revisited a previous concept, when he created a club in London that stayed open for eight months in 2008, but took a different thematic and aesthetic approach this time around.

"In this new project, the artist further investigates the notion of two-sidedness: the audience is presented with two different spaces which offer visually and acoustically opposed experiences, with no concession to fusion," said a statement from the venue.

Located at a former 1920s film studio, the nightclub is divided into internal and external areas. The first is entirely monochromatic, down to the lighting, and is hosting international DJs and live music acts.

Dark patterned surfaces are illuminated with white neons, which glow above and behind the bar. Metal mesh furniture is provided for those who need a break from dancing.

Outside, the neon lights shine in bright colours. The tubes are installed around the edges of a thatched hut that houses the bar, as well as an orthogonal structure with a DJ booth and a dance floor, where clubbers can enjoy music from locally based Caribbean and South American acts.

"Each performer embodies the oppositional concept behind the project itself: guests and clubbers can cross a permeable boundaries to venture into a double dimension and 'schizophrenic' journey," the venue's statement said.

The first events at The Prada Double Club Miami also coincide with the opening of a new Prada store in Miami Design District this week. The brand was founded in 1913 and is now headed by designer Miuccia Prada.

This isn't her first nightclub commission. In 2015, she asked AMO – the research arm of architecture firm OMA – to create 1990s-themed party venue for her other fashion brand Miu Miu in Paris.

Höller is best known for his playful architectural interventions, which have included the addition of a giant slide to London's ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture.

Art Basel Miami Beach runs 7 to 10 December 2017 at Miami Beach Convention, while Design Miami takes place from 6 to 10 December 2017 at a tent nearby.

Photography by Casey Kelbaugh.

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For Prada's Resort 2018 catwalk show, AMO filled Fondazione Prada's new exhibition space with mirrors and translucent pink columns.

The Italian fashion house's first ever Resort show was held in the Osservatorio, Fondazione Prada's new exhibition space in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II – one of the world's oldest shopping malls and the site of Prada's first shop.

The Osservatorio, opened in December 2016, is spread across the fifth and sixth floors in the Galleria's eaves, and overlooks the building's glass and steel vaulted roof and cupola.

For the Resort 2018 show, AMO – the sister firm to OMA – conceived a set design that explored the boundaries of "real and manufactured moments".

Seated on a linear arrangement of simple steel-framed benches upholstered in black and pink fabric, the audience was orientated so that they had a clear view of the Galleria's cupola.

A series of mirrored and pastel-coloured translucent columns lining the windows reflected the Osservatorio's rooftop views.

"Models walk along the windows," explained AMO, "glowing in the afternoon sun, suspended between the sky and the ornate iron dome that acts as the silent backdrop for the show."

On the other side of the room, folding screens made up of mirrored and pastel-coloured translucent panels were interspersed with panels printed with magnified images of the collection, as well as black and white photography of the cupola's steel structure.

A continuous mirror that wrapped the inside wall further blurred the distinction between reality and illusion by reflecting the entire catwalk – a technique that the studio described as "blending the spectacle into the set, creating an ephemeral ensemble."

The 2018 Resort show set highlights the continued prevalence of millennial pink – a popular muted shade of the colour that sits somewhere between beige and blush.

The collaboration is the latest in a long-running partnership between Prada and OMA and AMO – a pairing that grew out of a friendship between founders Miuccia Prada and Rem Koolhaas. Other recent catwalk designs created for the Milanese label by AMO have featured a series of colourful interiors with beds and benches.

Opened in 1867 and completed in 1877, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping mall was home to Prada's first store, which opened in 1913 and recently underwent a refurbishment funded by Prada and Versace. The new Osservatorio hosts exhibitions with a photography focus.

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For Prada's Autumn Winter 2017 show, AMO divided the catwalk into a series of colourful interiors with beds and benches.

The Italian fashion house presented the 1970s-inspired collection as part of Milan fashion week last week.

Wanting to step away from its "hyper-realistic" sets, AMO – the sister firm to OMA – designed a catwalk that presented itself as a series of interior spaces.

"In the current moment – when issues of simplicity and essentiality are becoming increasingly relevant – AMO and Prada felt the need to go back to basics, to abandon the construction of hyper-realistic and fully immersive sets in favour of a modest and domestic design," said AMO.

The catwalk was divided by a continuous wooden partition, which created a series of interior sceneries – some that were tiled, some covered in terrazzo, and others in Formica plastic laminate.

Audience members were seated on benches as well as double and single beds.

"The partitions, with their limited height, act as a screen between the different rooms, providing an individual perspective to each observer, while still allowing views of the models behind the boiserie," said AMO. "All the guests share the same personal yet collective experience."

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.

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

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

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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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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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Filmmaker Wes Anderson has ventured into interior design, with a bar intended to recreate the atmosphere of Milanese cafes inside the OMA-designed Fondazione Prada in Milan.

Wes Anderson, best known for films including The Life Aquatic and The Grand Budapest Hotel, was invited by Prada to create the main dining space inside its new arts centre, which occupies a converted distillery in Largo Isarco, southern Milan.

Named Bar Luce, the space takes references from famous Milanese landmarks and cafes dotted around the city, particularly those dating back to the 1950s and 60s.

These influences are visible in various details, colours and finishes – from the veneered wooden panelling that lines the walls, to the colourfully upholstered Formica furniture.

The pastel-heavy colour palette resonates with the aesthetic of Anderson's films, which are heavily stylised. But while many of the films favour symmetry in their composition, the director said there are no ideal angles from which to appreciate this space.

"It is for real life, and ought to have numerous good spots for eating, drinking, talking, reading, etc," said Anderson. "While I do think it would make a pretty good movie set, I think it would be an even better place to write a movie."

"I tried to make it a bar I would want to spend my own non-fictional afternoons in."

The space already featured a vaulted ceiling, which Anderson chose to highlight using patterned wallpaper. The aim was to create a miniature version of Milan's iconic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele shopping arcade.

More decorative wallpaper was added above the wooden wall panelling, recalling the windows and balconies of this famous building.

Other details include a pink terrazzo floor speckled with flashes of red, grey and white, and two rows of spherical pendant lights.

The commission is the latest of several collaborations between Anderson and Prada, which include a series of movies for the launch of the fashion houses's Candy L'Eau perfume, as well as the short film Castello Cavalcanti.

The characters of both this movie and The Life Aquatic feature in a pair of pinball machines, which sit alongside a classic jukebox. A teal-coloured clock hangs on the wall above.

Fondazione Prada opened its doors to the public last month. Rem Koolhaas' firm OMA renovated seven buildings at the complex, and also designed three new ones – including a cinema camouflaged by mirrors.

Bar Luce is located within one of these renovated buildings but can also be accessed directly from Via Orobia, allowing it to open outside of gallery hours.

Photography is copyright Roland Halbe and is used with permission

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Rem Koolhaas' firm has converted a century-old distillery in Milan into a new arts centre for Fondazione Prada, featuring a "haunted house" clad in 24-carat gold leaf and a cinema camouflaged by mirrors (+ slideshow).

OMA and its research arm AMO renovated seven buildings at the complex in Largo Isarco, southern Milan, and designed three new ones to accompany them – a cinema and gallery that are already complete, and a tower that is still under construction.

The old factory buildings and warehouses were upgraded with new finishes and fenestration, while the additional structures were designed to suggest a similar industrial character, despite being built using modern materials and techniques.

"We worked on a respect for what was existing," said Koolhaas, speaking at the project launch on Saturday.

"We analysed what was here already and we decided that there were a number of conditions and a number of needs that were missing, and basically we added those needs in new architecture."

"We didn't work with contrast but on the contrary, we tried to create a situation where old and new can work very seamlessly together and are sometimes actually merged together so that you cannot tell at any one moment whether you are in a new or an old situation," he explained. "That was exactly our ambition."

Fondazione Prada was established by the Italian fashion house Prada in 1993 as a cultural organisation dedicated to art, cinema and philosophy.

The new Milan venue gives the foundation a permanent exhibition space. It also marks the latest milestone in an ongoing collaboration between Prada and the Dutch architecture firm, which has included construction of pavilions, scenography and shopfronts.

According to Koolhaas, the most important aim of the Fondazione Prada project was to create a diversity of spaces for presenting art.

"I think that most contemporary institutions dedicated to art offer relatively limited typologies of display and are very similar in terms of scale, in terms of circulation, in terms of conditions," he said. "What we saw here was the potential for a real diversity."

The new Podium building – designed to host temporary exhibitions – and the cinema were both inserted into the centre of the 19,000-square-metre complex. They divide the space into a series of small courtyards, some level and some sloping.

The mirror-clad cinema is a standalone structure partially sunken underground, while the glazed Podium was constructed around another building – known as the Haunted House.

To add emphasis to this older structure, OMA carefully clad the building's entire exterior in 24-karat gold leaf. Only the glass of the windows was left exposed.

"It was actually a last-minute inspiration, to find a way to give value to a seemingly mundane and simple element," said Koolhaas. "But we discovered that gold is actually a cheap cladding material compared to traditional claddings like marble and even paint."

"To me the most exciting and now visible effect of it is how the gold and the reflected light of the gold contaminates the whole environment," he added. "As the light changes, the effect of this small intervention is really noticeable throughout the complex."

The project also included the addition of a cafe designed by film director Wes Anderson, named Bar Luce. Wallpaper on the ceiling and walls takes cues from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele – an iconic Milan building – while the colour palette, Formica furniture and veneered wooden panelling reference typical Milanese cafes of the 1950s and 60s.

Unlike his films, which favour symmetry, Anderson said there are no ideal angles from which to appreciate this space. "It is for real life," he stated. "I tried to make it a bar I would want to spend my own non-fictional afternoons in."

The new tower is being constructed in the far corner of the site and will open at a later date.

"For some reason art feels different on the ground than it feels on the 10th floor," added Koolhaas. "What will be unique about this tower is that every next floor will be one metre taller, so that will have a very varied effect on the artistic content."

The Fondazione Prada opens this week and its main exhibition is called Serial Classic, with scenography by OMA. Seeking to explore seriality and copying in classical art, a collection of ancient sculptures and reproductions are arranged over a landscape of stone slabs on both floors of the Podium.

The renovated spaces known as the Sud gallery and the Deposito host an exhibition named An Introduction, featuring cars by artists Elmgreen & Dragset, Carsten Höller, Tobias Rehberger and Sarah Lucas.

The four-storey Haunted House hosts a permanent installation conceived by American sculptor Robert Gober and including two works by Louise Bourgeois, while the Cisterna – a building made up of three vertical structures – presents a changing exhibition of three works from the foundation's collection of 20th and 21st century art.

The final exhibition space is the Nord gallery, which opens with an exhibition dedicated to the concept of the synecdoche.

Photography is by Bas Princen, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Read on for a short statement from Rem Koolhaas:

It is surprising that the enormous expansion of the art system has taken place in a reduced number of typologies for art's display. To apparently everybody's satisfaction, the abandoned industrial space has become art's default preference – attractive because its predictable conditions do not challenge the artist's intentions – enlivened occasionally with exceptional architectural gestures.

The new Fondazione Prada is projected in a former industrial complex too, but one with an unusual diversity of spatial environments. To this repertoire, we are adding three new buildings – a large exhibition pavilion, a tower, and a cinema – so that the new Fondazione Prada represents a genuine collection of architectural spaces in addition to its holdings in art.

The Fondazione is not a preservation project and not a new architecture. Two conditions that are usually kept separate here confront each other in a state of permanent interaction – offering an ensemble of fragments that will not congeal into a single image, or allow any part to dominate the others.

New, old, horizontal, vertical, wide, narrow, white, black, open, enclosed – all these contrasts establish the range of oppositions that define the new Fondazione. By introducing so many spatial variables, the complexity of the architecture will promote an unstable, open programming, where art and architecture will benefit from each other's challenges.

Project credits:

Architect: OMA – Rem Koolhaas, Chris van Duijn, Federico Pompignoli
Local architects: Alvisi Kirimoto & Partners, Atelier Verticale
Structural engineer: Favero&Milan
MEP engineer: Favero & Milan, Prisma Engineering
Cost consultant: GAD
Acoustic Engineer: Level Acoustics
Scenography: Ducks Sceno
Fire engineer: GAE Engineering
Prada engineering director: Maurizio Ciabatti
Prada project leader: Maurizio Ciabatti

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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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Italian designer Martino Gamper has created a "homage to the humble corner" in the shop windows of fashion house Prada (+ slideshow).

Prada enlisted Gamper to design its latest store front displays, creating environments for presenting both women's and men's clothing to passers-by.

The installations, named Corners, used panels of wood veneer to form enclosed angled spaces in which the mannequins are placed and are being replicated in Prada stores around the world.

"Corners is an evolutionary window design concept by Martino Gamper in collaboration with Prada which pays homage to the humble corner," said a statement on Gamper's website.

"The design draws its inspiration from perspective, fragments and contrasts between natural materials. Those elements are enhanced by the simplicity of a corner which is a common thread for all the displays."

Wood grains on the walls and floor are angled to emphasise the perspective and make the spaces look tighter.

Some of the spaces feature shelves and raised sections of flooring for displaying accessories.

Images of landscapes including mountains and forests are mounted in thin vertical strips at the back of each niche, aligned parallel to the glass windows in front.

Initially installed at the brand's flagships in London and Milan (pictured), the concept will soon be rolled out across Prada stores worldwide – each with a slightly different spin on the idea.

"Corners is a space within a space, making each display a unique story designed to evolve with the seasons," said Gamper.

According to his website, the designer "discovered his love of corners and began to probe the multiple emotions provoked by the single right-angled boundary" while studying at London's Royal College of Art, and has experimented with the architectural element ever since.

Prada's collaboration with Gamper is a departure from the brand's long-term partnership with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA, which has produced a series of unique store designs and catwalk sets for 25 years.

These include a runway surrounded by water for Prada's Spring Summer 2015 show and a portable, shape-shifting cultural pavilion in Seoul.

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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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Prada's "radical" Spring Summer 2014 collection referencing themes of femininity and power has scooped the top prize in the fashion category at Designs of the Year 2014.

Italian designer Miuccia Prada, commissioned a series of artists, including El Mac, Mesa, Gabriel Specter, Stinkfish, Jeanne Detallante and Pierre Mornet, to create large murals for the exhibition space in Milan used to host Prada's catwalk shows.

The artists were asked to "engage themes of femininity, representation, power, and multiplicity", creating the context for a collection that was inspired by the Italian designer's personal approach to feminist politics.

Images from the murals were repeated on clothes in classic sportswear silhouettes, with faces and graphic prints used across simply-shaped dresses and separates as well as accessories including a range of handbags.

A palette of khaki green, blue and black, mixed with bright reds, yellows and greens was described as an unusual colour selection for a spring/summer collection and heavy fabric choices – including fur coats – were also discordant.

The outfits were often overlaid with sequinned bra lets or jewelled panels, and the pieces in the finale of the catwalk presentation were heavily jewelled, but worn with the knee-high sports-style leg warmers and rubber-soled sandals that were used throughout the show.

Italian fashion designer Miuccia Prada told Elle that the collection was concerned with "women and the strength of women".

"We are here, we are strong, we are visible, we are kind of fighters… I wanted to give encouragement, to be out there," she said.

Writing on style.com, critic Tim Blanks said that the collection was the season's "high point" and described it as "a feminist statement that, in the light of the contemporary denigration of the very notion, came across as radical."

Vogue's Dolly Jones described the collection as one that would define what women wanted to wear this year.

"A really clever fashion designer doesn't just make you want some of the collection; she makes you want to chuck out your entire wardrobe and begin again," said Jones. "These were Peter Blake-style rainbow babes who made us want to climb onto their cloud with them, their feathered hair, bejewelled bags and rubber-toed, high-heeled plimsolls beguiling every time."

"By next summer we'll wonder what we ever wore before," she added.

The collection, which originally hit the catwalk at Milan fashion week last September, was released to the market earlier this year.

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Milan 2013: architect Rem Koolhaas has unveiled a collection of rotating, sliding and motorised furniture for US furniture brand Knoll (+ slideshow).

Designed by Koolhaas' architecture studio OMA, the Tools for Life collection includes a table with a top that rises and falls at the press of a button, a chair that can be adjusted in the same way and a counter made of three swivelling stacked blocks (above and below).

Koolhaas said: "We wanted to create a range of furniture that performs in very precise but also in completely unpredictable ways, furniture that not only contributes to the interior but also to the animation."

First glimpsed on the runway for Prada's Autumn Winter 2013 menswear collection back in January the collection, unveiled today at Fondazione Prada in Milan, has been launched to coincide with Knoll's 75th anniversary.

Above: swivel armchair with red button to adjust height

Two height-adjustable tables and a swivel armchair are powered by an electric motor and can be raised or lowered by pressing a large red button.

A low coffee table comprises three transparent acrylic boxes that slide apart to create cantilevered shelves, while upholstered cushions provide casual floor seating and a "table pocket" stores small objects.

Above: height-adjustable table and chair

Although not shown in these images, OMA has also designed a screen made from panels of foamed aluminum, travertine or wood laminate, a modular bench, another glass table and a height-adjustable stool.

Above: coffee table

Tools for Life will be on show to the public at Fondazione Prada at Via Fogazzaro 36, from 9 to 10 April.

Above: adjustable table

The collection was previewed during a Prada menswear show in January, and the fashion house has collaborated with OMA a number of times in the past, including on a shape-shifting pavilion in South Korea and a design for experimental exhibition spaces in Milan – see all Prada projects.

Above: table pocket for storage

We're in Milan this week covering all the highlights from the design week, including Zaha Hadid's monochrome pendant lamps for Slamp and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's installation of cork carousels – see all news and products from Milan 2013 or take a look at our interactive map featuring the week's best exhibitions, parties and talks.

Photographs are by A.Osio, courtesy of Knoll. Here's some more information from Knoll:

Knoll, Inc. introduces "Tools for Life," a new collection of furniture by OMA, the collaborative practice co-founded by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas in 1975. Knoll tapped Koolhaas, one of the most provocative thinkers and daring form-makers of his generation, to help mark its 75th anniversary. With this collection, Koolhaas joins Knoll’s pantheon of modern masters, which includes such figures as Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen and Frank Gehry. "Tools for Life" offers a contemporary interface between furniture and people, supporting the ebb and flow of work and social life, while adjusting to the different needs of both.

The collection will be on view during the 2013 Salone Internazionale del Mobile at Prada’s Milan exhibition space at via Fogazzaro, 36, where the pieces were first previewed during the Fall Men’s Show earlier this year. Public exhibition hours are 10:00 AM - 8:00 PM, Tuesday, April 9 and Wednesday, April 10.

Commenting on the endeavour, Rem Koolhaas said: "We wanted to create a range of furniture that performs in very precise but also in completely unpredictable ways, furniture that not only contributes to the interior but also to the animation."

At the core of the collection is Koolhaas’s belief that furniture should be understood as a high-performance tool rather than a design statement.

"I want to talk about work and not the office — the distinction being that today people work everywhere," added Benjamin Pardo, Knoll design director. "With that in mind, the OMA pieces are more kinetic than static: many are easily adjustable so that with changes in height, adjacency and degree of privacy, almost any space can be transformed to a place of work."

The simple, no-nonsense palette makes the furniture compatible with a range of residential and workplace interiors. Clear acrylic is juxtaposed with concrete; glass with leather; travertine with steel—beguiling and engaging contrasts that draw attention to individual pieces.

Horizontal "Tools for Life"

The dynamic 04 Counter is the collection's signature piece. Beginning as a monolithic stack of three horizontal beams, the user can rotate the top two beams and transform this wall-like unit into a series of shelves and cantilevered benches—a metamorphosis from a spatial partition to a communal gathering place. Rigorous engineering and a system of internal bearings and rails facilitate 360 degrees of movement. Patterned wood grain and leather surfaces provide unexpected and subtly sensuous contrasts.

For individual focused or group collaborative work, the 05 Round Table and 06 Table integrate mechanical sophistication with seemingly effortless effect. Both can be adjusted to accommodate lounge seating or even standing. The 05 Round Table features a travertine top with a travertine base or an acrylic top with an aluminum base. An exposed mechanism, powered by an electric motor, elevates or lowers the table.

Conceived as an executive desk, the 06 Table has a two-piece laminated glass top. The two horizontal surfaces, one a work surface and the other intended for storage, are separated by four round, glass columns.

The 03 Coffee Table is a stack of three transparent boxes constructed of clear acrylic. Internal slides allow the individual elements to be rotated and cantilevered, giving users the ability to adjust its overall shape depending on changing needs.

Seating "Tools for Life"

Comfort and privacy are explored in the collection's two primary seating pieces: 01 Arm Chair and 02 Arm Chair with high back. The 01 Arm Chair is a height-adjustable, swivel lounge chair with a clear acrylic exterior frame and leather interior upholstery. A mechanical column base with a signature red band provides height adjustment at the touch of a button. A concrete base plate grounds the chair. The 02 Arm Chair with high back has the same features, while offering uniquely flexible interior cushioning that when unfolded provides an enveloping privacy.

Adding to the selection, the 11 Floor Seating, featuring simple upholstered cushions, provides alternate seating heights for work, reflection or relaxation.

The 07 Bench and 08 Perch round out the seating options. The modular bench, made of interconnecting and corner blocks, can be adapted based on user needs. A mortise and tenon mechanism locks the blocks in line; a selection of materials allows for seemingly endless combinations. The 08 Perch is an adjustable stool with an internal gas assist mechanism. Featuring an upholstered seat, the Perch consists of three cylinders; the top and bottom cylinders are wood; the middle one is acrylic. Offering height adjustment from 19 to 30 inches, the Perch accommodates different work requirements.

Ancillary "Tools for Life"

The 09 Screen can be used to partition specific zones within an overall open space. A base of clear acrylic supports panels of foamed aluminum, travertine or wood grain laminate that can be cantilevered off-center.

The 10 Credenza serves as a complementary piece to any and all of the horizontal table elements by providing storage pockets that are accessed by a hinged lid.

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Milan 2013: Rem Koolhaas' OMA has designed a range of angular furniture for Knoll and used it to furnish the runway show for Prada's Autumn Winter 2013 collection at Milan Men's Fashion Week (+ slideshow).

Designed around a perimeter catwalk, the set was conceived by AMO, the research wing of Koolhaas' office, and furnished with pieces from a new collection that OMA is launching this year with American furniture brand Knoll.

Above: photograph is by Giovanna Silva

Models weaved between rectilinear armchairs, colourful rugs and a variety of coffee tables, while exterior and interior scenes were projected onto the walls to create the impression of doors and windows.

The audience was positioned within two central islands and observed the action from a tiered stack of wooden seating.

Above: photograph is by Giovanna Silva

This isn't the first time OMA and AMO have collaborated with Prada. The architects have been designing sets and stores for the iconic fashion label for over ten years.

Above: photograph is by Giovanna Silva

OMA also recently designed a new headquarters for fashion brand G-Star RAW and a modular display system for American accessories label Coach.

See more architecture and design by OMA, including a series of movies we filmed with partners Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf and Iyad Alsaka at the opening of the OMA/Progress exhibition in 2011.

See more scenography on Dezeen »

Photography is by Agostino Osio, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Here's some information from OMA:

"The ideal house"
Prada F/W 2013 Man Show space description

As an inversion of the traditional catwalk configuration, AMO conceives a set built around the perimeter of the audience, which is seated on an irregularly shaped central island. The audience faces an "ideal house": an interior populated with geometric furniture, objects and manifestations of everyday life. The models weave through this set, acting as characters in a sequence of sophisticated domestic scenes.

Above: photograph is by Phil Meech

A series of images are projected through multiple windows frames onto the perimeter wall. They alternate between outdoor urban images and interiors, expanding the show space and working as backdrop to the interior sets.

The stage and the island are built in wood. The entire scene is unified by a neutral light grey color that covers both stage and the perimeter wall. Furniture is built in wood, metal and Plexiglas in combination with paper textures, while objects are realized in blue foam and / or painted wood.

The abstract and geometric furniture that populate the ideal house are anticipations of the upcoming series designed by OMA for Knoll: a collection of 12 pieces of essential design and maximum adjustability that meet the most diverse range of uses. Furniture will be launched officially in their final version later this year.

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Prada Transformer, a portable, shape-shifting cultural pavilion designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture/Rem Koolhaas, will open to the public tomorrow in Seoul, Korea.

The pavilion - a temporary structure that has to be picked up with three cranes in order to rotate and transform the structure - will accommodate a variety of events in its opening three months including a fashion exhibition, a film festival, an art exhibition, and finally a Prada fashion show.

Designed by OMA’s research, curatorial and publishing unit AMO, the opening event titled Waist Down, will exhibit skirts designed by Miuccia Prada.

More images and details in our earlier story.

Here's further information from OMA:

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OMA’s Prada Transformer Opens to Public

(Seoul, 25 April, 2009)

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is proud to announce the opening of the Prada Transformer pavilion, a pioneering temporary structure that will be picked up by cranes and rotated to accommodate a variety of cultural events. The pavilion was opened in Seoul today by the Minister of Culture of South Korea and the Mayor of Seoul in the presence of Miuccia Prada and OMA founder Rem Koolhaas.

The 20-metre high Prada Transformer is located adjacent to the 16th Century Gyeonghui Palace in the centre ofSeoul. The pavilion consists of four basic geometric shapes – a circle, a cross, a hexagon, a rectangle – leaning together and wrapped in a translucent membrane. Each shape is a potential floor plan designed to be ideal for the cultural programming unfolding over the next three months: a fashion exhibition, a film festival, an art exhibition, and finally a Prada fashion show. Walls will become floors and floors will become walls as the pavilion is flipped over by three cranes after each event to accommodate the next.

Rem Koolhaas explained the idea behind the Prada Transformer: “Rather than having one average condition, we conceived a pavilion that, by simply rotating it, acquires a different character and accommodates different needs.” Koolhaas added: “The project is exciting to us because it is the first hybrid between Prada fashion and the Prada Foundation.”

The opening event in the pavilion is an exhibition of skirts designed by Miuccia Prada. Titled Waist Down, the exhibition was designed by OMA’s think-tank, curatorial, and publishing unit AMO. On 26 June, the pavilion will be flipped to accommodate a film festival co-curated by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Oscar-winning director of Babel (2006), and the critic Elvis Mitchell.Another flip will take place on 30 July, transforming the pavilion into a gallery for an exhibition by Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg, curated by Germano Celant, the artistic director of the Prada Foundation in Milan. The closing event of the pavilion is a Prada fashion show for 500 guests.

OMA/AMO has a long history of collaboration with Prada in multiple disciplines. In 2001 OMA designed the Prada Epicenter Store in New York, followed by the Epicenter in Los Angeles in 2004. AMO has been designing fashion shows for Prada and MiuMiu since 2003 and has been working on prada.com since 2006. Currently OMA is designing new exhibition spaces for the Prada Foundation in Milan.

The Prada Transformer project was led by OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon, associates Kunlé Adeyemi and Chris van Duijn and design architect Alexander Reichert. The pavilion was made possible by the support of LG Electronics and Hyundai, Red Resource Inc. and the City of Seoul.

See all our stories about Rem Koolhaas and OMA in our featured designer category.

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Prada Transformer, a portable, shape-shifting cultural pavilion designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture/Rem Koolhaas, will make its first appearance in Seoul, Korea next month.

Commissioned by fashion brand Prada, the pavilion takes the form of a tetrahedron with one hexagonal face, one cross-shaped face, one rectangular face and one circular face.

By flipping the pavilion so that the different faces lie on the ground the Transformer can host different events such as exhibitions, fashion shows and film screenings.

See all our stories about Rem Koolhaas and OMA in our featured designer category.

Here's some info from OMA:

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THE PRADA TRANSFORMER

A state of the art project space

Seoul, Korea

Milan, March 10, 2009 - Launching in Seoul at the end of April 2009, the highly anticipated Prada Transformer designed by OMA/Rem Koolhaas will showcase a groundbreaking series of cross-cultural exhibitions, screenings and live events. For five months this shape-shifting venue will host multiple interdisciplinary projects, bringing a unique mix of visual arts to Korea.

The Transformer combines the four sides of a tetrahedron: hexagon, cross, rectangle and circle into one pavilion. The building, entirely covered with a smooth elastic membrane, will be flipped using cranes, completely reconfiguring the visitor's experience with each new programme. Each side plan is precisely designed to organize a different event installation creating a building with four identities. Whenever one shape becomes the ground plan, the other three shapes become the walls and the ceiling defining the space, as well as referencing historic or anticipating future event configurations.

"Waist Down - Skirts by Miuccia Prada", an ongoing project by Miuccia Prada in collaboration with AMO, makes its Korean debut on April 25, showcasing a collection of skirts "in motion" ranging from the first ever Prada show to the present day. Skirts by emerging Korean fashion students will be included to show the interaction between two fashion worlds and to amplify the meaning of fashion from different cultural perspectives.

The exhibition space will then be transformed into a cinema showing a programme of films selected by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director of Oscar-winning Babel. "Flesh, Mind and Soul" is the concept for the unique programme - to be launched on June 26 - co-curated by film critic Elvis Mitchell, spanning multiple genres, countries and decades of filmmaking including a rich and substantial amount of physical, intellectual and spiritual films that will create a whole cinematic experience.

Subsequently, the Prada Foundation will present an exhibition, "Beyond Control", curated by Germano Celant, which will 'transform' the interior of the architectural object by OMA into an inspiring magma of works by some of the most significant contemporary artists.

Further cultural activities will be announced in the lead-up to the launch of the project. Prada and the Prada Foundation have combined their resources with their local partners' to develop an extraordinary programme for the Prada Transformer's innovative, changing stages. As the fields of fashion, art, film, design and performance now inform and influence each other with increasing diversity and complexity, this programme aims to stimulate and embrace multi-disciplinarian discourse.

Situated next to the 16th-century Gyeonghui Palace, the Prada Transformer - realized with the support of LG Electronics, Hyundai Motor Company and Red Resource Inc. - dramatically juxtaposes Korean history, tradition and folklore with this 21st-century multi-dimensional event space. Due to Seoul Metropolitan Government's passion and dedication to cultural projects, the Prada Transformer was well received and fully supported by the City. Visibly attuned to Seoul's modern positioning as a forward-looking and technologically advanced metropolis, the Prada Transformer is part of Prada's global commitment to the production of new realities in fashion, art, architecture and creative culture.

The architectural project is led by Rem Koolhaas together with associates Kunle Adeyemi and Chris van Duijn, and design architect Alexander Reichert.

As of today, the Prada Transformer is also visible online on pradatransformer.co.kr. The website is the result of a collaboration between Prada, AMO - the mirror image think tank of Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture -- and 2x4, a multidisciplinary design studio from NY focusing on art, architecture, and fashion world wide.

The concept of the site is strongly linked to the architectural project. Equal to the built pavilion, which transforms to accommodate different events, the website regenerates its graphics and contents according to the changes in use of the actual structure along time.

The main Miuccia Prada - "Waist Down - Skirts by Miuccia Prada" Exhibition

After creating sensations in Tokyo, Shanghai, New York and Los Angeles, this amusingly displayed exhibition of Prada skirts 'in motion' comes to Seoul.

The skirt is often overlooked as a medium of invention, at once flirtatious, imaginative, enigmatic and structural. Here Miuccia Prada and OMA/AMO playfully re-examine the ability of the skirt to prompt further cultural and emotional explorations of desire, sex and identity. For more information, please visit www.prada.com

Alejandro González Iñárritu - Cinema Programme: "Flesh, Mind and Soul"
The director of Oscar-multinominated Babel, 21 Grams and Amores Perros is one of the key protagonists of the Mexican new wave of directors who have made a huge impact on cinema in recent years.

The film programme is based on physical, intellectual and spiritual films that attend, shake and speak to the different parts with which we feel and perceive cinema. Co-curated by renowned film critic Elvis Mitchell, the unique grouping of films should leave viewers "both sated and hungry for more".

Elvis Mitchell is a former film critic of the New York Times and has most recently turned his talents to television, hosting KCRW's The Treatment and his own show Under the Influence for Turner Classic Movies.

Iñárritu's hard hitting and powerful style of filmmaking is grounded in a strong sense of neo-realism, often featuring character-driven, method actors like Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Cate Blanchett and Naomi Watts. His stories always have a political and social commentary underlying their plots, which at their core tend to focus on the fragility of family relationships.

Fondazione Prada - Art Installation: "Beyond Control"
Founded 15 years ago, the Fondazione Prada, conceived by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli and directed by Germano Celant, has strived to create a 'force field' in which all artistic languages might converge and radiate energies. This perspective has enabled the Fondazione to centre its commitments on the creation of unique projects, installations, exhibitions, conventions and festivals in which 'impossible' ideas might be brought to fruition. For more information, please visit www.fondazioneprada.org

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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:
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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:

--
(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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