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'PAPER FOR METROPOLIS PART 1' -2003 Prada Store vs. Fun Palace In 1996 Hans Hollein introduced the Venice Biennale focusing on the metaphor of the architect as seismograph, a figure oriented not to solve problems but to express statements on the potential of architecture: answering new requirements, inventing innovative concepts for a different lifestyle, entering new territories, perceiving unknown scenarios. Hollein's proposal is dangerous and confusing. Dangerous because it relegates the architect to a mere -even if sophisticated - tool. Confusing because the same statement could be valid for an advertising agent. But it is in part true. For instance the activities of Cedric Price and Rem Koolhaas, objects of my research, can fit that definition. In a pessimistic view, the impossibility to build the Fun Palace made Price an unheard prophet, while Koolhaas' Prada operation doesn't show clear boundaries between branding and design. It looks like the architect's own destiny is endangered and upon that basis there is a questions to be answered. How can the architect protect his or her autonomy without been secluded? Cedric Price represents the struggle of architecture to give an answer to a complex world at the beginning of the 60's, Rem Koolhaas, more detached, shows a new schizophrenic nature of this complexity forty years later. My research started from a linear comparison between the Fun Palace and the Prada store on Broadway, but it took an unexpected turn once my attention focused on the Projects for Prada book. My first intention was to use the book, as usual, as the means for my research on the stores, but I suddenly realized that the book itself would be the second term in the comparison. And what an unusual comparison: an un-built radical architecture versus structured promises on paper… MEDIA/MEDIUM: EMANATION Projects for Prada Part1 is different from Koolhaas' previous production: it isn't anymore a reflection on the generic city, neither a look back to his personal approach to design; this book is more than ever the project for Prada. A project that will not be outmoded by the construction of the flagship stores, because the relationship project-book is inverted and the actual store is nothing other than an 'emanation' of the book . Is this a new essentialism? I think that in a post-industrial way it is. The first future contract dates back to 1865 and was traded in Chicago. The trade of futures is based on the holding of a promise: the buyer will receive the goods based on those specifications he paid for in advance. The nature of the specifications had the power to classify the same good in different categories depending on the requested qualities. The financial market has created an underlying essentialism able to modify the production: the product's variety started following the taxonomy traded in the Chicago's stocks market . Prada's stores are just one of the multiple representations of the company's organic approach to branding and the book shows the future stores as part of a global strategy with maps of the world (the Prada World…), glossary and brief concepts. While CBOT is trading 'future' pigs, in the book Koolhaas sells 'future' means to reach new clients. If the future stocks in the industrial era were connected with products and goods, the post-industrial futures are promises of a new lifestyle. MEDIA 2: ZEITGEIST The history of design has many examples of union between designer and corporation: Behrens and AEG , Wright with Larkin and Johnson Wax, Zanuso and Brionvega . Behrens and Zanuso were designing factories as well as objects in a product-centered market. Wright understood the office building as a possible vehicle of representation for the company. Koolhaas renews this union on a more communicative level: he designs showrooms instead of factories and suggests scenarios for a new lifestyle instead of products. Koolhaas with Prada may represent the Zeitgeist of the year 2000 when city and architecture have succumbed to shopping. SIGN 1: BRANDING Prada's fortune derives from the clothing accessories, for their craftsmanship quality and for the overwhelming presence of the brand that in terms of actual dimensions occupies a big amount of the leather surface. In its transcendent path, from a small tag that shows the producer's name to a symbol of an experience, the brand becomes larger and larger to the dimension of an entire building: the flagship stores. In the Projects for Prada Part 1 the term 'epicenter' replaces 'flagship' as the adjective for describing the new stores: a seismological metaphor (again) alludes to new dynamic of the plate tectonics able to conform the world to a new Prada-Pangea. 
SPECTACLE/EVENT 1: EPICENTERS Nike Town and the Prada's stores are two ways of intending this recent typology: one focuses more on the spectacle of an entire city in a box, the others transform shopping into event. Nike Town's multilevel distribution recalls Piranesi's Carceri, while the multimedia apparatus surrounding the Prada customer transfers him directly into a TV reality. His image becomes part of a community vaguely populated by models and fashion victims: a new collectivity. MEDIA 2: OMA/AMO/PRADA'S AMBIGUITY We are used to celebrating the ambiguous relationship between designer and client that made Villa Malaparte possible: we never know where Adalberto Libera's contribution ended and where Curzio Malaparte's will intervened. There were two minds competing and mutually enhancing the project. In the Prada case the ambiguity is even more extreme, it is not an interaction between intellectuals upon the construction of a private estate but two groups of people speculating upon the realization of a public space: AMO think tank on one hand and Prada's PR Department on the other. The book is permeated by this ambiguity: Who is the author among OMA/AMO, Rem Koolhaas? Where are the boundaries between the architect, the architecture office and the consulting firm? It looks like we are facing a complex entity with multiple faces, a contemporary Cerberus made of reflecting surfaces. Why the title Projects for Prada Part 1? Is there a sequel, like for the blockbuster sagas, already on hold? Is it just waiting to quantify the success of sales of the first edition? And what is the difference between the book produced by the company's publishing branch (Fondazione Prada Edizioni) and a wallet produced by the accessories branch? They are part of the same product range: the book is also branded on the cover… The Italian and English text side by side and the introduction by Miuccia Prada and Ernesto Bertelli (the designer/owner and the CEO/owner, wife and husband) followed by the one by Koolhaas (as CEO of OMA/AMO) are elements that identify the partnership as a co-branding operation at the same level as Barnes & Nobles' bookstores hosting Starbucks' cafeterias. COLLECTIVITY: ACTOR The relationship between Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood , which produced the Fun Palace concept, lies in between the two previous examples: a public intervention not driven by economic interests. The common socialist background of the two explains the desire to bring 'culture' to the masses and the Fun Palace was going to be a testing place for non-authoritarian relationships between 'guest' and 'host'. This program takes in the improvisatory performance and public participation inherited from the Commedia dell'arte by Littlewood's theatrical experience. The Fun Palace represents collectivity values achieved by a facility able to catalyze interpersonal relationships through the activities hosted. In the designer and director's intentions the guest is a theatre actor. COLLECTIVITY: GUEST For Koolhaas/Prada the parallel is the talk show guest. The television set, laid down in the Prada Broadway's store, is ready to capture the customer and send him/her in that virtual collectivity which already populates his/her mind nourished with advertisements. Like in a show visitors are welcomed in the store: audience that enhances the instant celebration of the Prada costumer. The reasons underlying the different success of the two operations are enclosed in the choice of the utopia they refer to. The social utopia prefigured by the Fun Palace, is too far to be reached (for now…), while the utopia tickled by the Prada's store is reachable, just on the other side of the screen . MONUMENTALITY Also, the relationship of the two projects with monumentality is different. In the Prada case, monumentality is absorbed by the branding operation where the monument is reduced to the size of an all-pervading icon (the logo). The Fun Palace though, if compared with the Centre Pompidou, shows all its anti-monumentality: while Piano and Rogers represent a heroic use of technology on the public plaza, Cedric Price redirects the attention inward. TECHNOLOGY 1: FLEXIBILITY The Fun Palace is organized as a basilica with a main nave and 2 aisles, where the transept is a moving gantry crane spanning over a system of 5 rows by 15 steel columns: the static axial composition embeds in itself the dynamic component that activates the flexibility of the spaces. Flexibility is the architect's answer to the theatre director's requests of a "People playground" . If in a theatre the parts of the scene are tools supporting the narrative, in the Fun Palace technology helps visitors to use the spaces (what Royston Landau calls the philosophy of enabling ) and at the same time produces a variety of conformations, a calculated uncertainty, allowing the user to wander around . The central nave will host the mass activities (movies, theatre and rallies) while the side aisles will hold "the human servicing activities" such as restaurants, bars, children areas and workshops. The Fun Palace is a flexible performing space not based on the celebration of every nut, bolt and rivet that make this flexibility possible, but on a sober comprehension of the poetic possibilities : Cedric Price's drawings bring in the technology without its details, they show what technology can help to achieve more than a stylish representation of it. The service towers for instance, are simple space-frame columns made of latticed steel.  First Giant Space Mobile in the World: a diagram showing one third of the seven-acre Fun Palace. TECHNOLOGY 2: PERSONALIZATION If in the Fun Palace technology helps the visitor to use the space, in the Prada stores technology is a means to recreate the customer 'own' fantasies. The customer doesn't inhabit the space but uses it as a medium to enter an exclusive virtual community (while the underlying marketing strategy sees him/her as an empty shell to be inoculated with meanings). In other words, the exclusiveness perceived by the client as part of the kaloi kai agathoi elite differs from the exclusiveness planned by Prada as a tool of addiction: clients will come back because while shopping at Prada's they feel themselves personalized. The oversized dressing room is where the technology shows its monumentality: from the glass door that becomes opaque with the touch of a button to the video panels triptych that replaces the traditional mirror with camera views. An array of other screens allows for enquires about size and availability. The flexible and interactive dressing rooms are the tools used by Koolhaas to play with people's narcissism in a game similar to the one played by Wright with people's curiosity in the Morris Shop: he used to call the San Francisco store a mouse-trap. Empty shells, mice… that's what we are while shopping!? RE-NATURALIZATION: ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL Despite the friendship and admiration for Buckminster Fuller, Price goes beyond the geodesic sphere protecting and controlling the Manhattan environment: the Fun Palace uses new technologies in environmental control to get rid of physical barriers. This research field is object of a continuous investigation by Price that led to "ECHOES - Environment Controlled Human Operational Enclosed Spaces" an article published in Architectural Design in 1969. The schematic section, representing 1/3 of the seven-acre organism, is a diagram that names a number of the thirty techniques involved in the re-naturalization of the space . DE/RE-NATURALIZATION: COLECTIVE MEMORY In year 2000, environmental control, intended in its physical meaning, is no longer a priority: we know that we waste energy and… we don't care. The re-naturalization operated by Koolhaas in the Broadway store passes through the de-naturalization of the urban landscape. It works at the level of the collective memory: the street and the plaza are there together with their typical roughness. From medium to media: the idea to bring the city inside is anticipated by the analysis in the book. The Galleria: "The introduction of selected features from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II store to associate epicenters with classic Prada qualities". The Street: "A public area for 'other' activities -where customers can visit Prada without the obligation to buy". (DE & RE)-NATURALIZATION: NATURE AS A REPRESENTATION The only natural component in Cedric Price project is the Lea River, intended as a way to access the Palace, more than as a natural characteristic. There is no biological nature involved, and while envisioning the drawings we don't miss it because our attention is completely focused on the artificial enhancers of the human activities. Forty years later, when the boundaries between natural and artificial are blurred, the wallpaper in the Prada Broadway store undertakes the task to represent something other than the urban. For the opening celebrations the store's north wall was covered by a pattern of carnivorous plants. The design will change as new collections are introduced. The model published in the book, for instance, presents a wallpaper with an overview of a crowd partying, another kind of nature… If in the Fun Palace flexibility equals versatility, in Prada flexibility has a chameleonic nature. 
ABSTRACTION: BRANDING THE SPACE Starting by the mid 90's, companies like Nike, Polo and Hilfiger, have taken branding to the next level: they applied the brand not just on their products but also an the external world of the culture. The underlying effort was, and still is, to bring the brand from a representational level directly into the real world. The more advanced branding goes further, pushing the host culture in the background and spotlighting the logo: not anymore as the sponsor of the event but as the event itself. On these premises it is possible to understand Koolhaas' idea of the Wave that, in its sinuous contour of polished zebrawood veneer, forms an arena for public events. The steps display shoes during the day and accommodates the audience at night . The opposite side hides a platform that folds down to create a suspended stage for art performance . The Wave, that in this store is the real architectural gesture, connects the two levels: physically with the stairs on the side, visually with the double height. Luxury is 'waste', says Koolhaas in the book: "In a real estate context where every square meter counts, the ultimate luxury is wasted space. Space that is not 'productive' - not shopping - affords contemplation, privacy, mobility, and luxury". This double height wasted space is my hope: it is where the architect comes up and detaches himself from the figure of advertising consultant . For at least one moment, the logic of shopping stays outside. FLOW OF VISITORS VS. … Impermanence is behind the Fun Palace conception. "The essence of the Fun Palace will be informality. Anything goes." Joan Littlewood asserts and Cedric Price's intentions are to build a "short term toy with built-in expandability" with a life span of ten years. In Price's schematic drawings a section becomes a diagram and a plan a layout. It is through a layout that Price highlights the radially based escalators as pivots for different and temporary conformations. There is a particular attention for the spaces not to be fossilized in a single architectural schema that might become functionally out of date in a few years. Inside the palace, though, Price takes extreme care in the layout of the pathways, aiming not to interrupt the flux of the visitors: escalators and the absence of doorways allow people to walk around without interference. 
Escalators layout. Image from C.Price "Cedric Price", London: Architectural Association, 1984. …FLOW OF IMAGES On the logic of the Nolli's plan , where the public space of the churches is linked to the streets, Koolhaas recreates in the store the same dynamics of the wandering crowd outside, expanding them on two different levels. People can take either the elevator or the two stairs to reach the lower level, or they can take the bridge to go to the opposite side of the hole and peep at other shoppers 20 feet below. The elevator is another technological gadget proposed by the architect/advertiser (OMA/AMO): it displays merchandise while transporting customers. The contrast between the corrugated plastic and the sparkling glass of the shaft is part of a more general game between smoothness and roughness. From the media: "Luxury is rough. If everywhere is smooth, art becomes that which maintains a quality of roughness. Common is smooth, unique is rough. Recorded is smooth, live is rough. (…) In this future luxury must be rough." The conscious flow of the 'well educated adults' of the Fun Palace leave the scene to the clueless wandering of a crowd: if Cedric Price was still idealizing a better world, Rem Koolhaas surrenders to an amorphous reality. The real flow in the Prada store, though, is the one coming from the all-pervading monitors. Like many windows open on a parallel reality, the screens show a continuous montage of scenes from Antonioni's "Red Desert". 
NETWORK In the Fun Palace drawings only two forms of access are represented: by water and by air. There is no train station nor are there even parking lots. The river and the helicopter, together with a long distance observation deck, are the only traces of a relation with the exterior (figure 3). If the Pentagon's integration in the motorway system celebrates private transportation as the means to inhabit suburbia, in the Fun Palace the issue is suspended if not even ignored. Is how to get there not important? I rather prefer to say that the inner mechanism is so relevant that, at this stage, the project can disengage other problems. We cannot imagine that the designer of the Pottery Thinkbelt would be neutral about it. 
But the Fun Palace inhabits the suburbia, and if we translate the strategy that structures the Prada expansion and we borrow the concept of epicenter we can imagine a network of Palaces spreading over many cities' outskirts. Would be nice if in the future our perplexity will focus on the autonomy of one Fun Palace from the others, as now the debate tackles the 'nonlieux-ness' of airports and shopping malls. So, why not take as a model the Koolhaas/Prada recipe for expansion? Why not steal methodology from a successful field as the branding of fashion industry is? BLASÉ ATTITUDE + "In a world where everything is shopping… And shopping is everything… What is luxury? Luxury is not shopping": that's Koolhaas' formula, it works! If we, architects, are not able to conquer the clients with the design, let's sell them the idea of the design as luxury, the concepts of wasted and rough space. This should avert the risk of seclusion that I was pointing out in my initial question, but the architect autonomy is still endangered. Cedric Price tried to superimpose methodologies taken from the social utopia to a world that was indifferent to them but ultimately he failed. We cannot avoid contact with the all-pervasive shopping therefore we need to equip ourselves with a defense mechanism. The blasé attitude supplies us with a valid reference model for a filter: starting from what Georg Simmel presented as the capacity to experience everything "in an evenly flat and gray tone" the next step would be to individuate a principle of selection. In a world where everything is available, this critical selection suggests a future direction for design . |