Architect Rem Koolhaas explains his work at Fondazione Prada
Dutch designer was keen to avoid cliche in his renovation of a former distillery as art space, and resisted extravagance in the design of three new buildings for the site
An aesthetic war is being waged in the contemporary art world, with private foundations and museums turning to leading architects to transform the way we experience culture and in doing so they are creating a greater convergence between art and design.
The most recent is the new permanent home for the Fondazione Prada designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. According to the designer, the unusual location - a vast, 19,000 square metre former distillery on the southern outskirts of Milan - presented an unusual opportunity to create a new form of architecture offering an unprecedented diversity of spatial environments.
"It is surprising that the enormous expansion of the art system has taken place in a reduced number of typologies for art's display," says Koolhaas.
The architect, 70, is keen to explain his take on the relationship between seven renovated buildings and three new ones - a cinema, gallery and a 10-storey tower - his firm, OMA, has created.
"The new fondazione is not a preservation project and not new architecture," he says. "We didn't work with contrast, but on the contrary we tried to create a situation where old and new can work very seamlessly together and are sometimes actually merged together so that you cannot tell at any one moment whether you are in a new or an old situation."