PRADA Transformer in Seoul

A Deeper view inside PRADA Transformer in Seoul
text by Marcia Argyriades for Yatzer

Rem Koolhaas is undoubtedly one of the “Kool-est” and most influential architects! TIME Newsmagazine in 2008 put him in their top 100 of The World's Most Influential People. PRADA has been collaborating with Koolhaas and his architectural firm OMA since 2000, as a result of their long-term collaboration Koolhaas was asked by PRADA to design a building for four events in one pavilion, when at the same time Chanel canceled its fabulous traveling portal of luxury, the Mobile Art Exhibit designed by Zaha Hadid, because of the economic downturn.

The Prada Transformer is considered an unusual building which has one of four different apparent shapes, depending on the function of the building which is needed at the moment. How did this idea come about? Well, the past years there has been an interaction of applied arts; fashion is in architecture, architecture is in fashion; art is in fashion; art is in architecture and so on so forth! Some decades ago these disciples were separate and different, in current day they act as one. The concept behind this project is the following a hosting of four different events in one pavilion. The events hosted were a PRADA fashion exhibition, a cinema, a fashion show, and an art collection exhibition. The pavilions' shape is that of a tetrahedron; a tetrahedron is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, three of which meet at each vertex. The tetrahedron is one kind of pyramid, which is a polyhedron with a flat polygon base and triangular faces connecting the base to a common point. Cranes have been used throughout the event to lift the building in the air and rotate it so that the tetrahedron levels with the ground on one side and therefore change the building’s form and function while it leaves the remaining three shapes to compose the ever-changing building form.

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