Miuccia’s museum: Milan welcomes Fondazione Prada
Milan is having an uncharacteristically hip moment. Despite messy logistics and half-baked construction, The Expo has revitalised the city’s spiritual shroud, while iconic public figures such as Giorgio Armani have helped buoy the wave of attention with a new fashion museum and a recent Hollywood-studded 40th anniversary event. But no one has done more to shine a truly long-term, international and bright lens on this city than Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli who will open the doors to their long-awaited Fondazione Prada on 9 May.
In the works for more than a decade, the Fondazione opens with 'Serial Classic', an exhibit curated by Salvatore Settis, and lives up to every bit of hype that has swirled around it. The project is massively ambitious – 10 different buildings packed with a dazzling selection of contemporary and modern art sprawl like a labyrinth across 19,000 sq meters — and is just as satisfying.
‘People keep asking me if this is an art gallery, a public museum or a private foundation,’ Bertelli told us in a private preview of the substantial compound. ‘In truth, we wanted to make a space that was an aggregate of all three. It is very homogeneous and at the same time very heterogeneous.’
Visually, the Fondazione Prada is an intriguing hodge-podge of different buildings, styles, spatial sizes, creative themes and time periods. Shiny mirrored surfaces battle against raw concrete interiors; tiny, intimate rooms contrast with vacuous warehouse-sized hangars. Without a typical plan, the discovery process unfolds without a pre-ordained path, though a stop in the Wes Anderson-designed cafe, wrapped in tromp l’oeil wallpaper recreating Milan’s famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, would be an excellent place to start.
A former distillery, the location features a disparate mix of seven structures that date back to 1910, plus three new ones (one of which, called Torre, is still under construction) all set within a tall-walled, art-filled campus. Hundreds of pieces of art have been sourced from both Fondazione Prada’s private collection as well as non-permanent exhibits and site specific installations.
‘It was our intention to make old and new work seamlessly here,’ observed longtime Prada collaborator Rem Koolhaas, whose OMA architectural firm was charged with designing the compound. ‘At any moment, you can’t really tell if you’re in an old building or a new one.’
Set in the southern section of the city across from bleak railroad tracks, Fondazione Prada’s neighbourhood is in a decidedly un-cool part of town. ‘What’s fabulous about this area is its industrial quality,’ Koolhaas stressed. ‘We absolutely do not want to create any gentrification here - this was crucial for all of us.’
The classic Milanese might not be pounding on the surrounding real estate, but the space itself — which unfolds like a creative village with charming public spaces and open-air courtyards — is sure to become a lure, not just for the city’s resident design class, but for top art and architecture scene-makers around the world. And let’s be honest: this (much more than a six-month, mass, eat-fest) is exactly what the city of Milan needs most.
ADDRESS
Largo Isarco, 2
20139 Milan
Italy
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
JJ Martin
-
Toyota bz4X SUV is the marque’s first pure electric vehicle
The Toyota bz4X is our first chance to explore how the long-standing masters of mass automobile production make an EV
By Jonathan Bell
-
Ash Tree House offers a contextual approach to a north London site
Ash Tree House by Edgley Design is a modern family home in a north London conservation area's backyard site
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Inside Palazzo Versace Macau’s mosaic-rich extravaganza
Palazzo Versace Macau, the brand’s first hotel in Asia, continues to preserve Donatella Versace’s swanky hospitality vision
By Sofia de la Cruz Published
-
Giovanni Michelucci’s dramatic concrete church in the Italian Dolomites
Giovanni Michelucci’s concrete Church of Santa Maria Immacolata in the Italian Dolomites is a reverently uplifting memorial to the victims of a local disaster
By Jonathan Glancey Published
-
Milan’s 10 Corso Como revamp nods to the concept store’s industrial character
Milanese concept store 10 Corso Como unveils its new look by 2050+, a stripped-back design that nods to its 20th-century character
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Carlo Ratti announced curator of Venice Architecture Biennale 2025
Carlo Ratti has been revealed as the Director of the Architecture Department at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025, with the specific task of curating the 19th International Architecture Exhibition
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Floating infinity pool by Herzog & De Meuron at Lake Como is largest of its kind
Herzog & de Meuron creates the largest floating infinity pool in the world for Mandarin Oriental in Lake Como
By Lauren Ho Published
-
Freddy Mamani on Neo-Andean architecture and bringing a cruise ship to Bolivia
We catch up with Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani at Focus: Radical Repair, the conference curated by The World Around and Fondation Cartier in Milan, to talk about Neo-Andean architecture and his latest project, el Crucero de los Andes
By Laura May Todd Published
-
Best of brutalist Italian architecture chronicled in new book
Brutalist Italian architecture enthusiasts and concrete completists will be spoilt for choice by Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego’s pictorial tour
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Studio Tropicana, Switzerland and Italy: Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2023
Based in Switzerland and Italy, Studio Tropicana is part of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2023, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
WeWork Meravigli blends past and present in a 21st-century office space
WeWork Meravigli launches in Milan, bringing its ornate, historical new home to the 21st century
By Ellie Stathaki Published