The whole city remains in chaos due to the congestion of vehicles and motorcycles, circulating everywhere, occupying any free space to park in second or third row, filling to the top what could be any ancient boulevard. Redevelopment projects that have been carried out along the tourist areas try to be nicer to citizens, even the ancient Navigli Dock area has been completely renovated.
FONDAZIONE PRADA. THE GOLDEN HAUNTED HOUSE by José Juan Barba
In this pre-Expo context can also be found all major fashion design brands. At the core of the Milanese design, on the Via Bergognone, crossing the famous Via Tortona, inside the former Nestlé factory known as "Silos Armani", the new facilities that will hold the firm's designs and work materials are giving the final touch to its new center in which 50 million euros have been invested.
Further south is the building that will undoubtedly be one of the great centers outside the Expo to open in Milan, the Fondazione Prada designed by Rem Koolhaas. The inauguration was delayed a few days and is scheduled for May 9, in order to not coincide with the opening of the Expo 2015.
It will be a partial inauguration since, although the works on the facilities of the new exhibitions and collections are going well, the tower of white concrete located Northwest of a former distillery complex is still on the structure construction phase.
The Italian firm has been doing, during the last two decades, temporary art exhibitions in warehouses, churches, forgotten palaces or buildings outside the museums included in the art circuit. Prada has mixed its extensive art collection, gathered since the 50's, with the design of its fashion collections and for years has been developing the idea of a permanent headquarters, in order to improve the presentation of its art collection. The first attempts began to crystallize with a complicated and always controversial remodeling of a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, of the 18th Century.
Now, with the construction of the new facilities South of Porta Romana, in Largo Isarco, next to an old railway station and occupying the infrastructures of a former distillery from 1910, in a neighborhood away from the centrality of the design events in the city, the new "Fondazione Prada" will generate an international attraction point and a new centrality in the ever forgotten South of the city.
The Foundation, which already had some small galleries used to exhibit its collection in Milan, with the opening of the new facility will become the most serious institution in the city. The project is actually a group of buildings, a campus around two large courtyards whose project has been planned by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas (OMA) who has designed a wide range of spatial typologies, so the art collection can be exposed in a space that has a gross area of 19,000 m² / 205,000 ft², of which 11,000 m² / 118,000 ft² are devoted to exhibition space. The group of buildings has more than twice the area of exhibition of the galleries recently opened in the new Whitney Museum of American Art.
The couple formed by Patrizio Bertelli, Prada's C.E.O., and Miuccia Prada are the protagonists and intellectuals of the project. A cultural proposal that comes to fill a major gap in the panorama of cultural institutions in a city better known for fashion and design rather than for contemporary art and where, right now, cuts on public funding, caused by the crisis, make public proposals languish.
Prada's cultural project has a tradition, according to Emily Braun, Italian historian and curator, that comes from the seventeenth century, when Giuseppe Panza created a center for contemporary art in a villa in Varese on the outskirts of Milan.
The new compound dedicated to contemporary art, which now opens after seven years of works, is a mixture that places side by side renovated and redesigned existing buildings with other completely new buildings.
Rem Koolhaas has recently said, with helmet and muddy sneakers on, in the middle of the courtyard while visiting the site on foot and pointing out the functions of each building: "People talk about preservation and talk about new architecture". "But this is nothing. Here the new and the old face each other in a state of constant interaction. They are not intended to be seen as a whole unit."
The former distillery, composed of seven spaces including old warehouses and silos for brewing, has retained its basic identity, industrial and often disjointed qualities. Some of the spaces remain the same as when Koolhaas found them; others have been reconfigured although they give the feeling of being untouched. One of the main features of the new intervention is the use of materials, ranging from exterior glazing to white concrete structures for the tower and the "aluminum foam", a "blown up" aluminum can, as Koolhaas described it.
"It is surprising that despite the enormous expansion of art media, the number of typologies for art's display remains limited. It seems that art's apotheosis is unfolding in an increasingly limited repertoire of spatial conditions: the gallery (white, abstract and neutral), the industrial space (attractive because of its predictable conditions which are meant to remain neutral when juxtaposed with any artwork), the contemporary museum (a barely disguised version of the department store) and the purgatory of the art fair. The new Prada Foundation is also projected in a former industrial complex - Largo Isarco - but one with unusually diverse environments. We plan to add three new structures that vastly extend the range of the existing facilities, and to exploit existing buildings in new ways." says OMA.
The three new buildings are:
- The first one, a large exhibition hall for temporary presentations,
"The 'Haunted House' is an unusual vertical structure with many different rooms, and balconies that overlook the complex and the city. It will be decorated with changing wallpapers and other devices of interior design to generate an instrument for 'domestic' setting for specific works."
- The second building, new, is the unfinished tower of nine stories (on these days you can still see the the half-built structure scaffolding) that will hold the permanent facilities and a restaurant which will be accessed from a panoramic lift on the side.
"The major addition to Largo Isarco will be a tower. After working initially on a storage/office tower, we propose a building that offers a catalogue of radically different architectural conditions, to be used by artists and curators," add OMA on a description project text.
- And the third building is the theater, wrapped up in stainless steel with folding walls, which will allow to increase the space by opening to the courtyard for outdoor performances.
The Foundation aims to be a parallel institution of the brand and in the access sign there will not appear any logo (only the name with neon letters), an institution devoted to art that does not sell handbags designed by architects, as in the opening of the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
The interior will house a wide and eclectic art collection that also includes pieces of ancient art. This diverse vision has also been brought to one of the oldest four story buildings existing in the old distillery, that Koolhaas has called the "Haunted House" given the dilapidated state in which it was when he first saw it. The building has been covered with sheets of gold by specialised artisans. The choice of gold, Miuccia Prada says, aims "to give importance to something very modest" that eventually will get a soft patina like an old sculpture.
Rem Koolhaas explained it with these words "Milan is like a pancake with few high-rise elements," adding "The environment is so gray that it needed some color." The image of the building absorbs all kinds of reflections and gives an unrealistic picture to the surroundings.
Text by.- José Juan Barba
CREDITS. DATA SHEET.-
OMA Team.-
Partner in Charge.- Rem Koolhaas, Chris van Duijn.
Project leader.- Federico Pompignoli.Preliminary
Design.- Sam Aitkenhead, Doug Allard, Andrea Bertassi, Aleksandr Bierig, Eva Dietrich, Chris van Duijn, Paul-Emmanuel Lambert, Jonah Gamblin, Takuya Hosokai, Stephen Hodgson, Jan Kroman, Jedidiah Lau, Francesco Marullo, Vincent McIlduff, Alexander Menke, Aoibheann Ni Mhearain, Sophie van Noten, Jan Pawlik, Rocio Paz Chavez, Christopher Parlato, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Dirk Peters, Andrea Sollazzo, Michaela Tonus, Jussi Vuori, Luca Vigliero, Mei-Lun Xue.
Executive Project.- Chris van Duijn, Anna Dzierzon, Jonah Gamblin, Ross Harrison, Hans Hammink, Matthew Jull, Taiga Koponen, Vincent Konate, Andres Mendoza, Susanan Mondejar, Vincent McIlduff, Federico Pompignoli, Sasha Smolin, Michaela Tonus.
Construction documentation.- Katarina Barunica, Marco Cimenti, Chris van Duijn, Cecilia Del Pozo Rios, Anita Ernodi, Felix Fassbinder, Peter Feldmann, Siliang Fu, Romina Grillo, Jonah Gamblin, Clive Hennessey, Taiga Koponen , Roy Lin , Debora Mateo, Vincent Mc Ilduff, Andres Mendoza , Federico Pompignoli, Arminas Sadzevicius, Magdalena Stanescu, Lingxiao Zhang.
Construction Administration.- Mateo Budel, Marco Cimenti, Chris van Duijn, Andrea Giovenzana, Nicolas Lee, Federico Pompignoli, Victor Pricop, Pawel Panfiluk.
Site.- Former distillery at Largo Isarco No2, Milan, an industrial complex dating from 1910, comprising seven existing structures, including warehouse, laboratories, and brewing silos surrounded by a large courtyard and three new structures including a museum for temporary exhibitions, a transformable cinema building and a 10-story high gallery tower.
Program.- Total public area (12,300 m²); total private area (6,600 m²); total built area (18,900 m²).
Fondazione Prada’s new Milan venue is scheduled to open to the public on 9 May 2015.
From May and throughout summer 2015, Fondazione Prada will present a wide range of activities. The site will play host to a number of cultural highlights, including a bar designed by The Grand Budapest Hotel director Wes Anderson; Robert Gober and Thomas Demand will realize site-specific installations in dialogue with the industrial architecture and the new spaces in the compound. Roman Polanski, will explore the cinematographic inspirations behind his artistic vision, which will translate into a new documentary and a series of film screenings. Selections of artworks from the Prada Collection will be presented in a series of thematic exhibitions.
Exhibitions ‘Serial Classic’, in Milan (9 May - 24 August 2015), and ‘Portable Classic’, in Venice (9 May – 13 September 2015) both curated by Salvatore Settis—in collaboration with Anna Anguissola and Davide Gasparotto—will complete the program. These two projects, whose display system has been conceived by OMA, analyze 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.
The entrance building will welcome visitors to two new facilities, developed through special collaborations: a kids’ area designed by a group of students from the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles, and a bar where director Wes Anderson has recreated the typical mood of old Milan cafés.
