Prada Foundation: luxury recycles in Milan

It is now 22 years since Prada launched its foundation in the very city where this great luxury brand was born. The aim of the Fondazione is to present, observe and analyse the art and architecture of our time, as well as cinema and philosophy. Major and emerging artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Carsten Höller and Walter de Maria have made it a success. So much so that in 2011, a branch of the Fondazione was inaugurated in Venice, at Ca'Corner dell Regina, a sublime eighteenth-century palazzo.

In Milan, the Fondazione moved into a new space last May - excellent timing, just one week after the opening of the Universal Exhibition! The venue, housed in a former distillery dating from the early 20th century, to which three new buildings have been added, offers 19,000 m2 of aesthetic pleasures, including 11,000 m2 dedicated to exhibitions. The whole complex has been masterfully renovated by OMA, a firm headed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. However, in keeping with the spirit of the foundation, it was a group of students from the École nationale d'architecture de Versailles who were asked to design the children's area. Sublimated, this former distillery is set to become the focal point of the Porta Romana district in the south of the city. It's already safe to predict that new cultural spaces, restaurants, cafés and designer boutiques will open around it. Already at the Fondazione, in this former drunken factory, Wes Anderson, director of Grand Hotel Budapest, has been commissioned to reinvent the atmosphere of Milan's cafés of yesteryear. It's a world that deserves a visit in itself. In terms of programming, the honour of naming this multi-disciplinary venue went to the sculptor Robert Gober, the photographer Thomas Demand and the film-maker Roman Polanski.

Largo Isarco, 2 - Email: info@fondazioneprada.org - Internet: www.fondazioneprada.org