The Prada Foundation in Milan opens its new, nine-storey tower to the public today, April 20, and at the front of the line is an elite crowd at the intersection of the art and fashion worlds. The long-awaited Torre, which opens at the end of Milan Design Week, is the last piece of the puzzle to comple the architect Rem Koolhaas’s conversion of a former distillery into arts center for the billionaire fashion designer and collector Muccia Prada.
The epic inaugural show “Atlas” was conceived by Miuccia Prada with Germano Celant, the veteran Italian curator, and features works made between 1960 and 2016 by many well-known names, presented as either mini solo shows or juxtaposed with another A-listers’ work.
The artists include Jeff Koons, Walter De Maria, Mona Hatoum and Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Michael Heizer and Pino Pascali, William N. Copley and Damien Hirst, John Baldessari and Carsten Höller. Hirst among others was in Milan for the opening.
Exhibition view of “Atlas” in the Torre – Fondazione Prada, Milano. Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani e Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.
The exposed white concrete building has six exhibition levels and provides 2,000 square meters of space. The tower, which is the third of three new buildings in the complex, has been designed by Rem Koolhaas with Chris van Duijn and Federico Pompignoli from Koolhaas’s architecture firm OMA.
“Torre is the final section of a collection of different exhibition conditions that together define Fondazione Prada,” says Rem Koolhaas in a statement. “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.”
Exhibition view of “Atlas” at Torre – Fondazione Prada, Milano. Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.
The restaurant on the sixth floor is furnished with pieces from New York’s Four Seasons Restaurant, which was designed by Philip Johnson in 1958, as well pieces from Höller’s pop-up nightclub experience, which made its debut at Art Basel in Miami Beach in November.
Three Lucio Fontana sculptures, and paintings by William N. Copley, Koons, Goshka Macuga and John Wesley also fill the space, alongside artists’ plates designed by John Baldessari, Thomas Demand, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Elmgreen & Dragset, Joep Van Lieshout, Mariko Mori, and Tobias Rebherger, among others. A rooftop bar completes the experience, where visitors can overlook Milan’s urban sprawl.
See some more images of the iconic tower below.
Exhibition view of “Atlas” Torre – Fondazione Prada, Milano. Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.
Torre Fondazione Prada, Milan. Architectural project by OMA. Photo by Bas Princen 2018. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.
Torre Fondazione Prada, Milan. Architectural project by OMA. Photo by Bas Princen 2018. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.
Torre Fondazione Prada, Milano. Architectural project by OMA. Photo by Bas Princen, 2018. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.
Torre Fondazione Prada, Milano. Architectural project by OMA. Photo by Bas Princen, 2018. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.
Torre Fondazione Prada, Milano. Architectural project by OMA. Photo by Bas Princen, 2018. Courtesy Fondazione Prada.