Fondazione Prada/OMA/AMO

Rem Koolhaas's design for the new Prada Foundation in Milan

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The Office of Metropolitan Architecture, which is led by the visionary Dutch architect, has been commissioned to oversee the transformation of an early 20th-century industrial complex at Largo Isarco, in Milan, into the Prada Foundation’s new headquarters. An auditorium, a tower and an exhibition building will be added to the seven existing structures and courtyard, creating a total of 188,000 square feet of space for shows, including an innovative hybrid storageand- display area.

The project marks a fundamental change in direction for the Prada Foundation—established by Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, in 1993— from a producer of high-impact shows of works by the likes of Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor and Marc Quinn into a virtual mini-ministry of culture. The new facility, scheduled for completion in three years, will house multimedia laboratories in addition to hosting a vast range of events, from concerts and cinema festivals to symposia on architecture and fashion. The foundation’s goal, says Germano Celant, the director since 1995, is “to create a force field in which all artistic languages might converge and radiate energies that reach beyond the walls containing them into the urban context.”

"Prada's Plans" originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's July 2008 Table of Contents.