Projects for Prada Part 1 - Softcover

Bertelli, Patrizio

3.8

30 ratings by Goodreads

9788887029185: Projects for Prada Part 1

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8887029180 ISBN 13: 9788887029185

Publisher: Fondazione Prada, 2001

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In his inimitable style, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas presents his designs for Prada Stores in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Beginning with the proposition that "indefinite expansion represents a crisis... it spells the end of the brand as a creative enterprise," Koolhaas suggests an alternative: "expansion can also be used for a permanent redefinition of the brand...the epicenter store becomes a device that renews the brand by counteracting and destabilizing any received notion of what Prada is, does, or will become." Koolhaas proceeds to consider general ideas of brand, expansion, tourism and workspace, before launching into the specifics of his designs for the three locations. The book concludes with the plans he developed for the use of in-store technology, expanding the usual definitions of architecture and design. This volume is chock full of images: photographs, drawings, graphs, charts, all of the visual information that Koolhaas has become known for through such books as S,M,L,XL and Mutations. In Projects for Prada Part 1 his working methods for this unique design job are presented in great depth.

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Review:

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas's firm, OMA, and Italian fashion house Prada have a lot in common: They both existed for years before they became the pets of the American moneyed elite in the mid to late 1990s. They both eschew conventional notions of what's elegant or pleasing to the eye--Koolhaas's designs often look like post-industrial origami, and Prada's like uniforms for a really chic neo-Fascist army. Most of all, they're both poised for a transition from designerati darlings to global household words.

For all of these reasons, one supposes it's fitting that Miuccia Prada sought out Koolhaas and associates to design three new "epicenter" stores for the company--in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco--and to create Prada's Web site. They've documented that collaboration in this hefty, molto stile paperback that illustrates how they've rethought the shopping experience in ways both high-flown (in NYC, a shoe section that converts to a theater for performances and other "non-shopping events"; an electronic customer-identification/service system that either promises or threatens to track shoppers and their "needs" more closely than the FBI's) and cleverly common-sensical (dressing rooms with simultaneous, digitally-produced front, back and side-views, phones for requesting another size, and walls you can shift from translucent--so you can model for your friends--to frosted, for privacy).

Design-wise, the stores say "Koolhaas" as we know him so far--the facade of the San Francisco one, for example, is all perforated-looking metallic grids, and elsewhere there are shiny, swooping ceilings and walls, plus glass elevators that hover among glass floors like huge floating rooms. But most of what we see in this book is funky, moody photography of the sites' models, thickly populated by white figurines with the same unsmiling hauteur of Prada's sexy real-life runway models (not enough of which are featured here, by the way). The book's minimal text, though boldly designed, strikes a strange note somewhere between the usual half-cryptic semio-speak of Koolhaas's other books, and the oppressive language of corporate self-promotion ("Our ambition is to capture attention and then, once we have it, to hand it back to the customer."). But then, isn't that as it should be? With both Koolhaas and Prada, you often suspect that their recent stranglehold over American fashionistas and theory-queens alike is of great amusement to them. Between these pages, the joke once again might be on us, but who can't take a little joke when it's as stylishly presented as it is here?--Timothy Murphy

From the Inside Flap:

Indefinite expansion represents a crisis: in the typical case it spells the end of the brand as a creative enterprise and the beginning of the brand as purely financial enterprise.

Expansion can be measured on two levels: quantity and quality.

On the level of numbers, there are simply more and more Prada stores; on the level of scale, Prada is about tot launch a number of special epicenter stores.

The danger of the large number is repetition: each additional store reduces aura and contributes to a sense of familiarity. The danger of the larger scale is the Flagship syndrome: a megalomaniac accumulation of the obvious that eliminates the last elements of surprise and mystery that cling to the brand, imprisoning it in a 'definitive' identity.

But expansion can also be used for a strategy of permanent redefinition of the brand. By introducing two kinds of stores - the typical and the unique - the epicenter store becomes a device that renews the brand by counteracting and destabilizing any received notion of what Prada is, does, or will become. The epicenter store functions as a conceptual window: a medium to broadcast future directions that positively charges the larger mass of typical stores. (REM KOOLHAUS)

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