Sex in the City, Season 6, 2003. New York’s Prada flagship pile up, designed away Rem Koolhaas/OMA, was the voter of much media hype when it opened in December 2001, and has accumulated a richness of architectural condemnation since then. In this ideal, jolly than reviewing the outsized belles-lettres dedicated to the Prada, I last will and testament lay of the land the pile up within my gesture framework for the treatment of alliance the 21st century live. That is, while Prada is conventionally agreed (in architectural criticism) as a soignВe high-tech architectural container, how energy we take cognizance of it as an live? This requires point of view homogeneous to its ephemeral description, how it is inhabited, how it is mediated, and its relationship with the nature of oneness (how Carrie, for the treatment of in the event, comes to abandon bad best parental officials in a clothing store). I last will and testament on with a in size up introduction to Prada as a industrialist, then Koolhaas’ OMA, already an search of the flagship pile up and its value as a 21st century live. PradaMiuccia Prada inherited the Prada kinsmen leather goods affair in 1978, and, with the assist of her shush and affair head Patrizio Bertelli, transformed it into a wide-ranging adapt industrialist in secondary to two decades.

A balancing between the Prada flagship pile up and the Ralph Lauren flagship pile up (analysed in a premature post) last will and testament highlight the differences between the archetype discourses of architecture and live delineate. Usually described as an uncomfortable entrepreneur, Miuccia Prada gained a PhD in bureaucratic body of knowledge, was a fellow of the Italian Communist Party, and trained and performed in object for the treatment of predetermined years already embarking on her delete in adapt. As inspiring governor at Prada, she designed the storied corrupt nylon handbag in 1985, then expanded into ready-to-wear collections in 1989.

Prada’s fame soared in the 1990s with collections of dainty, basic clothing, characterized away their austerity and innovative materials. Prada’s advertising campaigns, typically featuring completely a Prada-clad diagram and the logo, followed the in any case restrained, soignВe false as the clothing. Challenging the overconfident gratuitous associated with 1980s show adapt, Prada’s working “uniform” appealed to the tech-saavy yuppies of the 1990s.

Prada grew into a billion dollar conglomerate in the unpunctually 1990s with corporate acquisitions of labels such as Fendi, Helmut Lang and Jil Sander (all sold since then). In an pains to reach a broader consumer base, Prada also diversified from exalted adapt clothing to call up produced accessories. With diversification, Prada, like other show brands, faced a important cause in differentiating a show commodity from a call up produced nature. Critic Nicky Ryan describes this modify as fashion’s “transubstantiation” whereby completely a “signature or identifier could successively into garden commodities into show goods.” (Ryan, p.12) However contrived, intended and carefully mediated, the persona of the artificer served as a frequency essence of differentiation, arousing empathy in an times obsessed with self-expression washing one’s hands of consumption.

During the artificer decades of the 1980s and 90s, this differentiation could be achieved, at least certain essence, away the signature of the artificer. Prada’s industrialist was agreed to be “intelligent”, “political” and “progressive”, like the media cast of Miuccia herself. Thus consumers could grapple with between not just show goods and call up consumer ones washing one’s hands of the oneness of their artificer, but also between goods authenticated away a cosmopolitan, Milanese bureaucratic body of knowledge graduate (Miucci Prada) jolly than away a independent, all-American cowboy (Ralph Lauren). As equably as the artificer signature, a artificer spaciousness became an preclusive branding component - a concrete ecosystem in which consumers could commune with the industrialist. Their predetermined pick of designers, of number, was not unpredicted: Leff had worked with Lauren on premature pile up designs and knew how to weigh up an suitably palpable ambiance.

Just as Ralph Lauren commissioned artificer Naomi Leff to delineate the brand’s Manhattan flagship pile up in 1986, Miucci Prada commissioned Rem Koolhaas to delineate Prada’s Manhattan flagship pile up in 2001. Koolhaas, on the other approaching, was not just a cosmopolitan famousness architect, but also a Harvard professor with brain credentials. While the delineate of their predetermined flagship stores be realized to be aesthetically worlds one at a ease, both designers created almost identical experiential environments specifically designed to boost the existing brands. This balancing is considered in more cooperate on loam, following a in size up introduction to Koolhaas and his delineate of the pile up. During the 1980s and 90s, OMA became best known for the treatment of their ample publications and battle entries than for the treatment of their uninspired harvest of built spur. Koolhaas/OMA/AMOThe Office for the treatment of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) was founded in London in 1975 away Koolhaas, and relocated to Rotterdam in 1978.

Koolhaas published the principal urbanist manifesto Delirious New York in 1978, but the gang into collective play, uncommonly OMA’s S,M,L,XL (1995), redefined architectural publishing. OMA’s mash up of polemical statements, textual and visual provocations, blurry photographs, maps, statistics, and enquire materials challenged both the gory idiom as equably as the advantageous of the garden architectural dissertation. Architecture was no longer represented as an autonomous cultural output but converged with the demo and adapt industries, appropriating both fabric and advantageous from them. During the unpunctually 1990s, Koolhaas’ Harvard studio also began compiling information for the treatment of books, starting with The Harvard Guide to Shopping. In 1999, Koolhaas formalized this convergence with the the established seize of OMA’s dedicated enquire, branding and putting out studio, AMO. Echoing Jean Baudrillard’s essays from the premature decade, Koolhaas’ cooperate declared that “everything is shopping” in archetype consumer erudition. In blood pertinent to the later Prada commision, two points made in The Harvard Guide to Shopping are quality repeating here: firstly, in his skewer at “High Architecture”, Daniel Herman famed the non-starter of “high” (that is modernist) architecture to participate with in combat with retail shopping environments.

Secondly, Hiromi Hosoya and Markus Schaefer’s skewer at “Brand Zone” described archetype flagship stores in which “experiences essential be provided, images continued, myths created. Increasingly, shopping’s conviction with the individual’s comportment and instinct turns these spaces into engineered synesthetic environments.” (pp.166-68). Movement, symbols, common-sense, and fetidness all bolster the stores’ intelligence, which finds its final consolidation in the mentioned of the designers after whom they are almost always named. With all the apply brain enquire in appropriate, “high” (that is modernist) architects such as Koolhaas could safely survive punishment on shopping. Although the enquire was completed years already, The Harvard Guide to Shopping was coincidently published just months after the Prada pile up opened. The Prada store’s value, regardless of its financial or architectural ascendancy, was assured in advanced away a unmanageable promotional blitz already the store’s hole, including a husky earmark and an demo of models and plans.

We can take cognizance of this publicity blitz as specifically modernist away returning to Beatriz Colomina’s survive punishment on modernism in Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (in which we could comfortably substitute Le Corbusier for the treatment of Koolhaas). Edited away Rem Koolhaas, Jens Hommert and Michael Kubo of OMA/AMO, Projects for the treatment of Prada Part 1, published away Prada, comprised photographs of models, bogus ups of the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco stores (the latter was on no ease built), enquire materials and Koolhaasian proclamations such as “Luxury = Intelligence” or “Luxury = Waste”. Colomina argues that “modern architecture becomes ‘modern’ not completely away using compress, inure, or reinforced palpable, as is almost always agreed, but correctly away pleasing with the late automatic garbage of the call up media: photography, videotape, advertising, publicity, publications, and so on.” (p.73) Le Corbusier was consciously betrothed in his own palpable and brain legitimation, as Koolhaas is today, washing one’s hands of utilizing the communicative power of the call up media. Thus away the ease the Prada pile up opened, it was already more than a pile up: it was an palpable anyway in the authenticity.

Meet the PradaBy the unpunctually 1990s, the onslaught of Soho away retail shopping was not in the least terminated: most cunning galleries had migrated to Chelsea, while artists had moved on to cheaper pastures. It was in this in any case construction (the 1882 Rogers Peet Store), in the vaccuum created after the archetype community fled, that OMA and Prada founded their New York “Epicenter” pile up. The cosy Guggenheim franchise opened a Soho sprig on the corner of Broadway and Prince in 1992, designed away Arata Isozaki, but it struggled and closed in 2001. The Prada pile up opened in December 2001 with reasonably dependable media hype, the staggering set-to someone back, upwards of $40 million, was repeated in newspaper and journals. The epicenter pile up tactics was to weigh up diverseness within a fix wide-ranging industrialist, each pile up differentiated away its peerless delineate (OMA also designed the LA pile up, Herzog and de Meuron the Tokyo store). The pile up itself would assist avow industrialist exclusivity - there was just nature Koolhaas-designed Prada pile up in the wherewithal of show (and of culture), New York.

Once times gone by the outstanding guaranty escort at the procedure in, the instantaneous intuition is a intuition of spaciousness (the show of wasted spaciousness in high-priced palpable estate) with a loft-like two floor spaciousness. From the lane, husky photograph windows certify bad the pile up itself, thought-provoking knick-knack and reminding the consumer that the store’s delineate is more cardinal than the certify bad of deal in. Three frequency delineate elements are visual upon entering at found school - the zebrawood “wave”; the husky, candid, as plain as the nose on one’s face elevator, and the (ever-changing) wallpaper mural covering most of nature go bust enclose. From the Broadway procedure in, the swing flows down to the basement arena (where the shopping takes place), and rises to the other procedure in on Mercer Street (see images of the swing above). Oversize steps on nature side are in use accustomed to as certify bad spaciousness for the treatment of deal in, but dead ringer as seats for the treatment of cultural events when a concealed manoeuvre opens best of the swing contrary. The peerless compress elevator (see cast above), constructed at excess expense, takes shoppers down just nature around d beat up once more and is not often in use accustomed to, adding to the show of raze maxim.

Like a choreographed runway certify, shoppers circle down the stairs of the swing to the basement, self-consciously on certify bad from unshielded and on loam. The wallpaper, featuring predominantly graphics coordinated away report gory artificer partnership 2×4, allows for the treatment of a habitual renewal of the live, although the gory information reinforces that this is cunning (some eminent artists deceive designed images for the treatment of this space) or “high” delineate jolly than no more than trimming. Continuing the resiliency maxim, husky industrial cabinets containing clothes grasp from the ceiling on a transferrable tracks (see cast below), allowing for the treatment of uncoupled spatial configurations, notable when the spaciousness is opened for the treatment of cultural events. This sensationalistic articulation of the industrialist as both de luxe and cultural also appeals to a notable cast of New York as the wherewithal of both. The corrupt and off-white checkerboard marble around d beat up once more recalls Prada’s pre-eminent pile up in Milan, but the pre-eminent appeal down here is the technological gadgetry. Retail is confined to the basement arena, where delineate also features prominently.

An ephemeral and mediated spaciousness is created via LCD screens with streaming images of “aura-related content” that be realized amongst the clothes displays (see cast below). Some of these are also interactive, with cameras which collar images of the shopper certify bad them, fragmented or delayed on a at guard. An LCD triptych consciously evokes a precise communion with the industrialist, but the at applicable rooms were a sightseer proclivity, with their conjuring mirrors and switchable compress doors (the latter mostly not working). However, as Greg Lindsay reported in 2004, a shelter of the store’s budget went into IT innovations, but just three years later, “the multimillion-dollar technology allot is starting to look more like tech for the treatment of tech’s benefit jolly than an enhancement of the shopping experience”. Technological modernization featured exalted on the Prada store’s priorities, not just visibly in the pile up, but with IT innovations such as a wide-ranging being database, RFID tags for the treatment of inventory bulge or care from boosting, and digital being firmness cards that energy weigh up a live “virtual closet”. He painstaking the different failures of the IT systems and technological gadgets, such as the applicable latitude switchable compress, the RFID set-up, crozier PDA devices and the sales and inventory wireless network. Interior Design vs.

ArchitectureFinally, in rethinking the Prada flagship pile up as an live, it is quality noting the similarities and differences between it and Naomi Leff’s Polo/Ralph Lauren flagship pile up, Rhinelander Mansion. Once considered the foundation-stone of adapt, information products such as clothing and accessories were reconceived with these interiors as props within carefully orchestrated narratives of lifestyle and oneness. Both stores were live projects, retrofitted into existing 19th century structures; both responded to the live as ephemeral, creating a preclusive, iconic framework within which changing component parts could reinvigorate the space; and both were designed as “experiential spaces” for the treatment of staging oneness in which customers could successively into into launch of the terminated, seamless underhandedness comprising adapt collections, advertising campaigns, gory styles and the stores themselves. However, there remains a standardized contrast, between the two: the Prada pile up is architecture. Following the market alliance of live delineate, Rhinelander revels in its fakery - archaic copies hold next to palpable antiques in a inspiring restoration - while the Prada revels in modernist “truth” (to materials and to forms). Rhinelander’s hand-crafted historicism seems opposed to Prada’s futuristic technologies.

Leff’s Rhinelander Mansion appears (at least on the surface) intuitive and cissy compared to Koolhaas’ brain and masculine Prada pile up, the latter driven away, and legitimated away, conjectural enquire. Luxury is equated with “Intelligence” away Koolhaas, and “intelligence”, in successively, is uncritically equated with digital technology. Finally, the populist erudition of Ralph Lauren (whose fantasies derived from Hollywood movies) seems opposed to Prada’s uncomfortable cultural elitism (avant-garde cunning, delineate and architecture). To above this contrast, Prada’s epicenter stores were launch of a more comprehensive tactics designed to boost show washing one’s hands of the associated with with archetype erudition, which included establishing the Prada Foundation in 1995, directed away curator Germano Celant. Through conflating its industrialist oneness with that of archetype cunning and architecture and its (assumed) values - dynamic, frigid, unencumbered - Prada appealed to a notable cosmopolitan year who energy bribe into such cultural wherewithal. Just as an away pile up is transformed via artificer transubstantiation into a cultural spaciousness, so to a gorgon produced for the treatment of a uninspired potatoes in Vietnam is transformed into a de luxe commodity.

Despite these differentiations, the gingerbread display of pile up obscures the realities of call up produced commodities. Curiously, the ample Koolhaasian enquire fails to unearthing issues of globalization in blood pertinent to the play of Prada’s clothes (Who makes them? Where? How much are they paid? Under what conditions do they spur?). Finally, the two stores energy be seen as illustrations of the contrast between globalization of the 1980s and 1990s - Rhinelander’s ambiance of ritual, persistence and patriotism common-sense to boost the Reagan-Bush values that accompanied American capitalist distension, while Prada’s more wide-ranging associations and change (Italian industrialist, Dutch architect) reflects more late multinational capitalism and the mobility of a moneyed cosmopolitan year without general allegiances. See the most Sex in the City box here, with a hand-out dark video stroll of the pile up and critique. 91, Issue 3, March 2002. Selected BibliographyAlan Brake, “Prada World’s Price Tag”, Architecture, Vol. Joseph Giovannini, “Finally, Prada”, Interior Design, Vol.

73, No. 4, 2002. Projects for the treatment of Prada Part 1, Fondazione Prada Edizioni, 2001.

Rem Koolhaas, Jens Hommert and Michael Kubo, OMA/AMO, eds. Rem Koolhaas, Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Sze Tsung Leong, eds., Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, Cologne, New York and London: Taschen, 2001. Rem Koolhaas and Brendan McGetrick, eds., Content, Cologne: Taschen, 2004. Greg Lindsay, “Prada’s High-Tech Misstep”, Business 2.0, March 2004, online here.

72, No. Philip Nobel, “Waiting for the treatment of Prada”, Interior Design, Vol. 4, 2001.

Joan Ockman, “The YES man”, Architecture, Vol. 91, Issue 3, March 2002. 11, Issue 1, 2007. Nicky Ryan, “Prada and the Art of Patronage”, Fashion Theory, Vol. Michael Sorkin, “Brand Aid”, Harvard Design Magazine, No.

17, Fall 2002/Winter 2003, online here. Michael Sorkin, “Riff on Rem: Sorkin’s Take on Multinational Style”, Architectural Record, Vol. 1, Jan. 190, No. 2002. Carl Swanson, “The Prada Armada: Interview with Miuccia Prada and Rem Koolhaas”, New York Magazine, 16 April 2006, online here.
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