Baptized as a Tower, the 60-metre high tower of Fondazione Prada’s arts compound in Milan, has been completed and opened to the press today, as we had previously announced.
Torre is the third new structure OMA added to the former gin distillery on the southern edge of Milan, transforming the 19,000 m² industrial campus into a venue for art display and cultural events, the Fondazione Prada.

“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”, was explained by Rem Koolhaas.

The design of Torre is devoted to the development of a new typology for the exhibition of art. The white concrete tower has nine levels, each with different spatial parameters, due to variations in plan dimensions, height and orientation, and with a facade that alternates between glass and concrete surfaces. The height of the ceiling cumulatively increases with each floor from the bottom to the top of the tower. Six of the nine levels are exhibition spaces, while the remaining three floors host a restaurant and other visitors’ facilities. A 160m² panoramic terrace completes the structure offering a spectacular view of the city.
 
"With the completion of ‘Torre’, the only vertical gallery on the compound, Fondazione Prada can finally reveal its presence to the center of Milan, emphasizing the strong relation between Prada and the city of Milan," said Chris van Duijn.

Earlier additions to the industrial complex were Podium, an exhibition pavilion at the center of the compound, consisting of a translucent gallery space on the ground floor and a second gallery space clad in aluminum foam on top, and Cinema, a multimedia auditorium with large bi-fold doors, which can be used in multiple spatial configurations in combination with the outdoor courtyard. Together, the renovated structures and the new buildings create a rich and spatially diverse setting for the visual and performing arts in Milan.
 

TORRE - Statement by Rem Koolhaas

Torre is the final section of a collection of different exhibition conditions that together define Fondazione Prada.

Its rectangular plan is constructed on a wedge-shaped site, on the North-West 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.

At the rear, a diagonal structure emerging from the vastness of the Deposito pulls the tower back. 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.

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…

At the base of the tower, a second entrance offers direct access to the tower, its restaurant and roof terrace, the experimental performance space of the Deposito, and to the other parts of the Fondazione.

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.

More information

Label
Architects
Text
Partner in Charge.- Rem Koolhaas, Chris van Duijn
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Project leader
Text
Federico Pompignoli
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Schematic Design
Text
Alexander Reichert, Sam Aitkenhead, Doug Allard, Andrea Bertassi,
Aleksandr Bierig, Eva Dietrich, Paul-Emmanuel Lambert, Jonah Gamblin, Joshua Beck, 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
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Design Development
Text
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
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Construction documentation
Text
Katarina Barunica, Marco Cimenti, 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
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Construction Administration
Text
Mariacristina Agnello, Katarina Barunica, Emilio Boiardi,
Matteo Budel, Marco Cimenti, Chris van Duijn, Anita Ernődi, Felix Fassbinder, Peter Feldmann, Siliang Fu, Jonah Gamblin, Andrea Giovenzana, Romina Grillo, Clive Hennessey, Marianna Katenko,Taiga Koponen, Nicolas Lee, Roy Lin, Débora Mateo, Vincent McIlduff, Andres Mendoza, Enzo Nercolini, Pawel Panfiluk, Caterina Pedò, Marton Pinter, Cecilia del Pozo, Victor Pricop, Arminas Sadzevicius, Magdalena Stanescu, Davide Troiani, Michele Zambetti, Lingxiao Zhang
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Collaborators
Text
Local Architects.- Atelier Verticale. Structural Engineer.- Favero&Milan
MEP Engineer.- Favero & Milan, Prisma Engineering. Fire Engineer.- GAE Engineering
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Client
Text
Fondazione Prada
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Site
Text
Former distillery at Largo Isarco No.2, Milan, an industrial complex dating from 1910, comprising seven existing structures, including warehouses, laboratories, and brewing silos surrounding a large courtyard.
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Program
Text
Total public area: 12,300 m²; total private area: 6,600 m²; total built area: 18,900 m²
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

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 colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which 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 Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); 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 publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, 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.

Read more

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.

Read more
Chris van Duijn joined OMA in 2000 and is based in Rotterdam. He has been involved in many of OMA’s most renowned projects including Universal Studios in Los Angeles, the Prada stores in New York and Los Angeles (2001), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005) and the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012). Recently completed projects include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015) and the Garage Museum of Contemporary in Moscow (2015).

In addition to large-scale and complex projects, he has worked on interiors and small-scale projects including private houses, product design, and temporary structures such as the Prada Transformer in Seoul (2009).

Currently he is overseeing the design of the Axel Springer Campus in Berlin and the Jean Jacques Bosc Bridge in Bordeaux, the construction of the Parc des Expositions in Toulouse and the Bibliothèque Multimédia à Vocation Régionale in Caen, as well as product development projects.

Chris holds a Master of Architecture from the Technical University of Delft.
Read more
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...