The final, towering touch to the Fondazione Prada in Milan is ready to be unveiled in April, three years after the billionaire fashion designer and collector Miuccia Prada opened the prestigious private museum in Milan.
When the Fondazione Prada launched in May 2015, the nine-story, 197-foot Torre was still under construction. Now completed, the landmark building in the former gin distillery on the edge of Milan is set to officially open on April 20.
Its completion marks the long-awaited final stage of the more than 19,000 square metre complex designed by Rem Koolhaas with Chris van Duijn and Federico Pompignoli of OMA, the studio led by the Dutch star architect. Rotterdam-based OMA is responsible for flagship Prada stores around the world. The nine-story tower adds a dizzying variety of exhibition spaces and panoramic views of post-industrial Milan.
“By introducing so many spatial variables, the complexity of the architecture will promote an unstable, open programming,” Koolhaus said in a statement. “The interaction between the spaces and specific events or works of art offer an endless variety of conditions,” he added.
The Prada Collection includes many important works by 20th and 21st century Italian and international artists. Since launching the space in Milan, the foundation has presented shows of work by various renowned artists.
The Italian fashion house opened the 19,000-square-meter headquarters for its art foundation on May 9 2015 in a century-old ex-distillery transformed and extended by Koolhaas.
“There’s no museum of contemporary art in Milan and no real dedication from the municipality to promote” such art, said Astrid Welter, project director of the Fondazione Prada. “This is why it was seen as a necessity to come in with an offering.”
Every other year, Italy stages the world’s biggest art exhibition – the Venice Art Biennale – hosting a roster of cutting-edge artists from around the world. Yet the Italian government has otherwise been slow to embrace contemporary art within its museums and institutions. It was not until May 2010 that the country got its first national museum of contemporary art, Rome’s MAXXI.
Companies and private individuals have stepped in to fill the gap. Prada started its contemporary art foundation in 1993, staging exhibitions and events in Milan, Venice and elsewhere.
Prada’s co-founders Miuccia Prada and Fabrizio Bertelli own a substantial number of artworks that their Fondazione’s curators will draw on to put together exhibitions, Welter said.
The collection includes works of post-war European and American and International art.