The Italian fashion company Prada invited OMA to design three big stores in the USA – one in New York, one in Los Angeles, and a third in San Francisco. These stores, inspired from research on new concepts for shopping, aimed to generate an integrated service structure that enabled Prada “to provide a new sense of exclusivity, but also to reinforce the diverse and intriguing aura of their brand”. The New York project, located on Broadway, consists of a conversion of the former Guggenheim store in SoHo.The stores were conceived with specific insertions in relation to the brand and to the city and the cultural context where they were situated in. Prada also desired to avoid the concept of a classical flagship store, not wanting a simple enlargement of a generic store. To do that, they aimed to offer a diversification of the shopping experience, overlaying the commercial function with new spatial typologies and experimental areas, that would create an ideal environment for specialised personal care and service.The Prada Epicenter in New York takes over 7,010.4 square metres, which are distributed between the ground floor and the basement of the building. As a way to connect the ground floor to the basement area in a more natural way – and also as a mean to guide the customers to the more invisible parts of the store – OMA designed a big wave that descends towards the basement and then rises subsequently, to re-connect to the ground level.The wave, made of zebra wood, is formed by two different areas: on the left, the slope has stairs that occupy its entire width, and on the right, a smooth surface that rises up to the ground-floor. The steps area is used as an informal display area, where the customers can try on shoes and browse through bags and other accessories. On the other side, the smooth surface is punctuated by an event platform that rotates out of the wave at the push of a button. Once the platform is out, the stairs on the left can be turned into an auditorium for performances, film projections and lectures.View of the stairs that can be used as a product display area or as an auditorium.General view of the store and the Broadway entrance. Inside, the building’s brick walls are covered in a translucent wall of polycarbonate, which was used as a way to establish a dialogue between old and new.OMA opted to use experimental technology, intriguing materials, and innovative display methods to enrich and transcend the shopping experience. On the ground floor, the exception to the polycarbonate walls and ceiling consists of a mural of wallpaper that covers the entire length of the store, which allows a rapid change of the environment.The products are displayed in large metal cages that are suspended from an overhead track system. This was designed as to create “singular shopping addresses, like inverted buildings in a street – or a hanging city”. It’s interesting to notice that these volumes can contract at the back of the store into a solid volume, which allows to free the space of the store for public activities.
All photographs taken on the 14th September 2018 with a Nikon D3200 | Lens: AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED
(Except for photos no. 03 and 08 shot with a Nikon COOLPIX P500)
References:
El Croquis 131-132 OMA / Rem Koolhaas (I) 1996-2006 / ed. Fernando Márquez Cecilia y Richard Levene, Madrid: El Croquis Editorial, 2006.
My Architectural Guide 