Koolhaas and AMO desing the support for real-virtual catwalk of Prada fashion collection

In this time of pandemic and social distance, virtual reality has also found its way on the fashion catwalks.

To mark joing of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons as the fashion Italian house's co-creative directors and to announce the debut Prada's Fall/Winter 2021 menswear collection, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his think tank studio AMO have devised the setting for the show titling it as "Possible feelings", a group of abstract stages, a set of geometric rooms covered in changing and suggestive materials.

Possible feelings, PRADA by Rem Koolhaas and AMO. Photography by Agostino Osio, courtesy of OMA.

"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.

Koolhaas and AMO designed four rooms in different shapes connected by doorways. Circular and poligonal rooms organised "to create the illusion of a never-ending route," said architect Giulio Margheri, who led AMO's collaboration with Prada.

Spaces clad in a variety of colourful, unexpected materials, the design explores the need to feel and the pleasure of tactility, stimulating the senses, giving in a range of walls and floors textures and finishes. "The textures add complexity to the space, while remaining an abstract background for the protagonist," Margheri said.

The set's "non-spaces" were characterised by bright colors and and panes of marble, resin, plaster, or faux fur found throughout, "inviting and seductive, they can pretend to be both interior and exterior, hard and soft, warm and cold: simultaneously both and neither, they allow absolute freedom of interpretation and expression," explains Prada.

Finally, 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 also had an original electronic soundtrack by Plastikman aka Richie Hawtin. Experience the space in 3D below.

View more images

Metalocus recommends

Exterior rendering of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Tang Wing (view from the southwest corner). Visualization by Filippo Bolognese Images, courtesy of Frida Escobedo Studio.

The MET Unveils the Project for its New of Modern and Contemporary Art Wing by Frida Escobedo

Kepax Bridge by Moxon Architects. Photograph by Simon Kennedy

New pedestrian and cycling bridge over the River Severn, Kepax bridge by Moxon Architects

Ephemeral pavilion by IAAC. Photograph by Adrià Goula

An ephemeral carbon-negative pavilion for ACCIONA Energía by IAAC

More information

Label

Name

Text

Possible feelings.

Label

Event

Text

Prada fall/winter 2021 menswear collection.

Label

Company

Text

Prada.

Label

Design Development

Text

Rem koolhaas / AMO.

REM KOOLHAAS

Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944. He began his career as a journalist, working for the Haagse Post, and as a set-designer in the Netherlands and Hollywood. He beganHe frequented the Architectural Association School in London and studied with Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell University. In 1978, he wrote Delirious New York: a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, which has become a classic of contemporary architectural theory. In 1975 – together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp – he founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture).

The most important works by Koolhaas and OMA, from its foundation until the mid-1990s, include the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague, the Nexus Housing at Fukuoka in Japan, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Grand Palais of Euralille and Lille, the Villa dall’Ava, the Très Grande Bibliothèque, the Jussieu library in Paris, the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Seattle Public Library.

Together with Koolhaas’s reflections on contemporary society, these buildings appear in his second book, S,M,L,XL (1995), a volume of 1376 pages written as though it were a “novel about architecture”. Published in collaboration with the Canadian graphic designer, Bruce Mau, the book contains essays, manifestos, cartoons and travel diaries.

In 2005, with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman, he was the founder to the prestigious Volume magazine, the result of a collaboration with Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (Columbia University NY).

His built work includes the Qatar National Library and the Qatar Foundation Headquarters (2018), Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005), Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003). Current projects include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, a new building for Axel Springer in Berlin, and the Factory in Manchester.

Koolhaas directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and is a professor at Harvard University, where he directs The Project on the City, a research programme on changes in urban conditions around the world. This programme has conducted research on the delta of the Pearl River in China (entitled Great Leap Forward) and on consumer society (The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping). Taschen Verlag has published the results. Now is preparing a major exhibition for the Guggenheim museum to open in 2019 entitled Countryside: Future of the World.

Among the awards he has won in recent years, we mention here the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000), the Praemium Imperiale (2003), the Royal Gold Medal (2004) and the Mies Van Der Rohe prize (2005). In 2008, Time mentioned him among the 100 most influential people of the planet.

Laboratorio de ideas de la Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). AMO

AMO is the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), co-founded by Rem Koolhaas in 1999. Applying architectural thinking to domains beyond building, AMO has worked with Prada, the European Union, Universal Studios, Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, Condé Nast, Harvard University, and the Hermitage. It has produced exhibitions, including Expansion and Neglect (2005) and When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013 (2013) at the Venice Biennale; The Gulf (2006), Cronocaos (2010), Public Works (2012), and Elements of Architecture (2014) at the Venice Architecture Biennale; and Serial Classics and Portable Classics (both 2015) at Fondazione Prada, Milan and Venice, respectively.

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a coloured "barcode" flag – combining the flags of all member states – that was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU.

AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including The Gulf (2006), Cronocaos (2010) and Public Works (2012) and for Fondazione Prada including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its principle publication Elements. Other notable projects are a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

Published on: January 24, 2021

Cite: "Koolhaas and AMO desing the support for real-virtual catwalk of Prada fashion collection" METALOCUS. Accessed

<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/koolhaas-and-amo-desing-support-real-virtual-catwalk-prada-fashion-collection> ISSN 1139-6415