Fondazione Prada has created its new Headquarters (inaugurated in the spring of 2015) in Largo Isarco, in an area of Milan that was once given over to industrial production.

The project for the recovery of the site in order to create a new home for Fondazione Prada was entrusted in 2008 to the Dutch architects Rem Koolhaas and Chris van Duijn, of the OMA firm. The distillery’s historic structures were recovered and repurposed to house the Fondazione’s many activities, and three new constructions lend an innovative character to the citadel. The Tower, facing the city center, soars with its irregular shapes over the lower buildings; the Haunted House, a 4-storey building clad in gold leaf; and the Podium, a vast central space on two storeys.

Fondazione Prada was established by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli in 1993 as an institution promoting reflection about the contemporary in art and culture. Behind the Fondazione is a name in fashion known worldwide, with 102 years of activity.

The new Largo Isarco venue in Milan covers 19,000 square meters and, in addition to housing the Fondazione’s permanent collection, it boasts wide areas dedicated to temporary exhibits and events, as well as to educational and recreational activities

DON'T MISS

The Movie Theatre's foyer hosts a ceramic work by Lucio Fontana, Battaglia (1948): originally made for Cinema Arlecchino in Milano, it evokes the artistic and cultural rebirth of the years of post-war modernization in Italy.

From the furbishing to the ceiling the Bar Luce, located at the Foundation’s entrance, evokes the atmosphere of the historic Milanese bars of the fifties and sixties, filtered through the eyes of contemporary Italian cinema. Its vaulted ceiling reproduces in miniature the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. According to the designer of this one-of-a-kind bar, the American director Wes Anderson, "it would be a great set, but also a beautiful place in which to write a movie".

CURIOSITIES

Amongst the special projects that the Fondazione has set up in Milano, of particular interest are Dan Flavin's light installation for the church of Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa (1997) and the legendary video-musical project by Laurie Anderson entitled Dal Vivo, with the collaboration of the San Vittore Detention Centre (1998).