DOES PRADA AW23'S RUNWAY SIGNAL A RETURN TO (SET) BASICS?
Photo Courtesy of Prada
17 jan 2023, for frame
Location
L.go Isarco, 2, 20139 Milano MI, Italy
Design
Brand
AMO spatially investigated the principles of architecture for a set that echoes Prada's AW23 exploration of fashion fundamentals.
Key features
The AW23 Prada menswear show by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons took place at the Fondazione Prada Deposito in Milan, which AMO transformed into an underground parking lot. Visitors were greeted by a minimalistic, dark scene, with a 2.7-m-high ceiling shrouding robust grey sitting blocks. As the show began, the roof rose, revealing ‘art deco-meets-Carlo Scarpa’ chandeliers simultaneously recalling ceiling designs from the famous German 1960s sci-fi series Raumpatrouille. The room became lighter as the ceiling rose to 9 m, exposing the building's concrete shell. The existing orange metal structure of Deposito and several-year-old traces of the grid from Prada’s AW19 runway were displayed on the floors, adding an extra visual layer.
FRAME's take
In 2015, AMO explored ‘the ceiling’ as a spatial composition principle and architectural fundamental for the display of Prada’s SS2016 collection at the brand HQ. Heavy fibreglass and polycarbonate stalactites shifted the space's proportions and perspective, turning the ceiling into a scattered surface that defined the floor occupancy. Making clever use of the Deposito’s 10-m height, this iteration reveals a less ornamental outcome but demonstrates architecture's capabilities as an engineering discipline and reminds us of the mechanism of movement toward infinity in modernism.
The set also transports us to a time before widespread social media branding, when Prada's experimental architectural interventions were among its most valuable assets. It represents a bold step forward in the long-awaited reconstruction of the brand's identity.