#foam and scissors. the only artistic tools you need

[flufflecat]

Making more prototypes of my palisman (⁠人⁠ ⁠•͈⁠ᴗ⁠•͈⁠)

[differentfurycherryblossom]

How to Build a Dollhouse: Make Your Own Family Heirloom

Unless you're lucky enough to have inherited a handmade DIY Doll House from an earlier time—perhaps one of those grand, exquisitely detailed masterpieces that a grandmother or great-aunt might have doted over for hours—you'll most likely find real quality only by building your own, buying a precut kit from one of the reputable dollhouse manufacturers, or taking out a mortgage at an exclusive toy store.

Whichever route you take, you'll probably end up with a dollhouse made of plywood—usually a thin lauan for the die-cut kit models, and thicker stock for the homemade versions. Both are plenty sturdy and have the bulk to prove it—the larger kits can weigh a very solid 50 pounds or more.

Construction aside, there's one clear measure of quality in any dollhouse, and that's accuracy in scale: the proportional translation of full-size features to miniature ones. The most popular scale is 1" to 1'; hence, a house measuring 30' X 42' becomes a model 2 1/2' × 3 1/2' in size. Likewise, wall thicknesses, door heights, and window openings all should be reduced proportionately so as not to look awkward in miniature.

In an attempt to achieve a comfortable middle ground between durability, weight, and faithful scale, Clarence Goosen, a former MOTHER staffer, developed this farm-style dollhouse with DIY modern mini furniture, using a sheathing-over-framing technique common to full-size structures. The framework is made of white pine, cut into strips of no more than 1" in width. The sheathing is corrugated cardboard covered on the outside with poster-board siding. Inside, pieces of fabric, wallpaper, or wood set off the different rooms.

The result is an inexpensive (albeit a time-consuming) project with the accurate detail of the better kits. Those who simply follow the instructions will be well on their way to completing a duplicate of the house you see here; the more adventurous can use the techniques to modify this plan or even to design a whole new structure to suit their tastes. Because many of the raw materials are free, there's little reason not to experiment with the house's shape or its features.

Tools and Building Materials

Before you begin, take stock of your tools. With the exception of one item, you won't need anything complicated. An artist's trim knife (or a utility knife), a steel straightedge, a square, a hammer, sandpaper, and a pair of 8" scissors will do everything but cut the wood. For that, you'll need either a standard table saw or, better, a compact bench-top model with a small-diameter blade. If you have access to neither, have someone cut the strips for you—it's important that they be trimmed accurately.

How to Make

1.  Download your free craft templates and cut your dollhouse furniture with scissors.

2.  Decorate your dollhouse rooms with your favourite patterned paper and stick with glue. We used  a variety of paper patterns for the different rooms.

3.  For extra detail, you can create a skirting board for your rooms by placing ribbon at the bottom of your shoebox and sticking in place with double sided tape.

4.  If you have a small shoebox (pictured below) to create your individual rooms, get a piece of thick cardboard the width and depth of your shoebox to create a floor for your dolls house then cover with your selected papers.

5.  If you have a large shoe box (as pictured below) take two pieces of thick cardboard and create a cross in the center, fix together with tape and cover with your favourite papers

6.  Use the Washi Tape to cover the edges of your cardboard edges for a pretty finish.

7.  Place one piece of Dovecraft Small 3D Foam squares to your paper furniture cut outs and place in your DIY mini size doll house series, gently press down on your paper furniture to ensure they remain secure.

Kids will love the chance to get creative decorating their own house to fill with their favourite toys. Why not show us your recent upcycled crafts in the project gallery; we would love to see them!

[chapter2pk]

Tired of going after small art supplies to the market again and again? Couldn’t find the art supplies that you were looking for? Was that trip to the market for art supplies a waste of time? Well, not anymore! Chapter 2 is here to help you work your passion for art.

We respect the desire of every artist to improve their artwork and help them in the process by providing art supplies online Pakistan. We believe good quality art supplies can only help enhance your artwork and add clarity to it. This is why we make sure you don’t have to go through any trouble while looking for art supplies by supplying them to your doorstep anytime, anywhere in Pakistan.

Be it Paints of all kinds, a canvas pad, art pads, paint brushes, pencils, stencils, a clay tool set, woodcraft sets and tools, Canvas pads, watercolor pads, sketch pads, calligraphy pens, stencils for calligraphy, trace papers, gesso for canvas painting, colors, crayons, fabric paints, sponge brushes, painting kits, Oil paints, paint spray, acrylic paints, glue gun, paper cutter, glass painting or any kind of product needed to help you in your professional art ventures, we have them all!

For those who love bling and glitters, and shiny materials we have a large variety of glitters in the form of powder and glitter glues. Tinsels and glitter foam sheets are also available in every color so that your arts and crafts material is always updated and available.

We have pencils of all kinds and sizes available. Apart from that we also have a variation in scissors available with us. All the arts and crafts material needed for beginners is at your disposal on our website.

This is not it; we make sure to provide products of different brand lines. You will find your favorite brand supplies at Chapter 2 without a doubt. Art supplies can be expensive at times but don’t worry! We have a vast price range for different products, so you can compare your prices and buy the products that come under your price range. Comparing price ranges for different products is very easy on our website. All the prices of the items have been clearly mentioned for your ease. You can easily select the quantity and place your order.

In art quality of the material used matters a lot because, the better the material, the better the results of the art. That is why we make sure that we only provide you with quality products that will give you the required results. Moreover, quantity is not a problem for us. We can provide big or small orders on a short notice. All you need to do is put your trust in us when it comes to buying art products because this is what we take pride in.

If you live in Pakistan and are an art lover, then Chapter 2 is your paradise! Because we are here to provide you all you need to fulfill your passion for art whether it’s paint brushes or sketchbooks or basic things like scissors and glue guns. We aim to become the biggest online arts and craft store with everything available for our customers within a short time!

It often happens that some customers come up with certain products which have run short in the market, but we have a solution for that too. We provide custom order facilities to our customers so that the process of your arts and craft doesn’t come to a halt!

For your convenience, every product on the website has been categorized so that you may not have a hard time finding it. All you need to do is type it in the search bar and all the search results matching your query will pop right up!

Happy Art Shopping!

[whiskeyandscissors-blog]

Have you signed up yet? Still debating? Here’s some fun facts about the project:

- it’s a FREE to you project. All you have to do is provide a mailing address and post your finish project to the social media outlet of your choice. I take care of everything else.

- it’s ongoing. I have the means to keep it going for as long as I want. There’s no real goal except to share the tools to help people make things. 

- already signed up? Feel free to sign up again. I’m keeping a list of who gets what project so you’ll likely not get a repeat envelope. 

- what you get: all the supplies* you need to create a project or piece of art, whether it be a greeting card, a mini bunting, an embroidery piece, a small hand bound book...it’s whatever I come up with when it’s time to make the kit. 

(*note: the only thing I don’t include is glue or double stick tape, scissors. I do, on occasion, include foam dots if it’s a card kit, but otherwise, I’m not sending adhesives) 

- you also get a detailed, written by me instruction sheet 

-it’s designed for any level artist or crafter. Maybe you don’t make things but want to try something. Maybe you don’t have time for an elaborate project. Maybe you already make things but want to try something different or are looking for inspiration. 

So sign up! 

[projectcosplay]

So if you know me at Project Cosplay, I try to find cosplaying solutions that don’t require the use of power tools or expensive specialty equipment whenever possible. Today a podcast I follow on twitter (@FanBrosShow) was looking for recommendations on throwing together an inexpensive Riri Williams/Ironheart costume, and I provided some advice for a quick closet cosplay. I figured since Project Cosplay hasn’t been getting much attention from me lately, I’d also share that quick cosplay advice here.

Riri is a pretty simple costume to closet cosplay and it shouldn’t require much more than a little money, and some glue and scissors.

A quick note of caution:  When cosplaying a character you do not share the ethnicity of, be sensitive and self aware of potential issues with the costume. Do not tape your eyelids nor do your make up with the intent to “look asian”. Do not darken your skin tone to imitate an ethnicity that is not yours.

Top: https://www.amazon.com/Womens-Lightweight-Sleeveless-Turtleneck-Stretch/dp/B00O0L4XI0/

Pants: https://www.amazon.com/Caringgarden-Womens-Leggings-Tights-Contrast/dp/B01JA1YBC2/ or https://www.amazon.com/Leggings-Fitness-Patchwork-Stripe-Polyester/dp/B0756Z12CN/

Arc Reactor: 

Buy this from an Etsy artist: https://www.etsy.com/listing/184901817/iron-man-arc-reactor-replica-prop

Buy this light up USB with retractable connector and attach it using double sided foam tape: https://www.amazon.com/MARVEL-REACTOR-LIGHT-FLASH-DRIVE/dp/B00CDZN0PW/

Cut out white adhesive reflective vinyl in as little or as much detail as you want and adhere it directly to the shirt: https://www.amazon.com/Avery-Hi-Energy-Reflective-Vinyl-Silhouette/dp/B076FCLK1L/

Wig:

It’s not difficult to find inexpensive wigs with a little searching, but here are some quick tips in choosing what to buy.

Always look at the on a wig head pics. Never trust the pics on a model, they’re usually stolen and not using the wig being sold.

When in doubt, but longer than you need. It’s easier to trim a wig than weft hair in.

Look at reviews and customer pics before purchasing. When that’s lacking, look for specific wig product reviews on you tube.

Be conscious of the shipping time and cost as a lot of the less expensive options are shipped from overseas.

When possible, look for wig stores and manufacturers you can trust to provide a consistent product and look for them by name.

Remember you usually get what you pay for. A lot of cosplay wigs are a case of “nice for the price”, not daily wear wigs.

Expect to need to do some styling.

A few cheap-ish Riri options:

https://www.amazon.com/AisiBeauty-short-curly-synthetic-blonde/dp/B074W89S73/

https://www.amazon.com/Kryssma-Natural-Looking-Machine-Synthetic/dp/B073WV52GW/

https://www.amazon.com/SHANGKE-HAIR-wig/dp/B0752DYDRM/

I encourage searching more on Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, for a wig that suits the look you want, your price limitations, and shipping time.

Prop Iron Man Helmet:

Go to your local toy store and pick up a kid’s Iron Man Helmet, potentially on clearance: https://www.amazon.com/Rubies-Costume-Captain-America-Civil/dp/B01B8WW36C/

Make a papercraft helmet using a free pattern, scissors, cardstock/thin cardboard/poster board, and glue: 

http://www.papercraftsquare.com/life-size-iron-man-mark-vi-mark-6-helmet-for-cosplay-ver-2-free-papercraft-download.html 

http://www.papercraftsquare.com/life-size-iron-man-mark-vi-mark-6-helmet-for-cosplay-ver-2-free-papercraft-download.html 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaK26fXz1Vo

If you go the papercraft helmet route you’ll either want to paint it or use adhesive sheet vinyl to get a smooth final look. Adhesive vinyl is recommended that you use a fancy cri-cut machine, but for our purposes, scissors cutting the same pattern as the papercraft and careful application should do the job. I recommend Happpy Crafters for your vinyl and you should only need two large sheets in metallic god and red. https://www.happycrafters.com/oracal-651-glossy-adhesive-vinyl-large

If you want to see an example of adhesive glossy vinyl over papercraft, I did it for a low-polygon lion mask earlier this year.

[thegoodmemoriesbymynameisno-blog]

9 Must Have Craft Tools

Those of us who have been crafting for a while have likely accumulated a lot of tools and supplies. The best thing about being well stocked in these areas is when I get a wild hair (hare?) to be creative I can usually look at my stash and put something together. While stacks of fabric and ribbons are great, there are a few must-have tools for being crafty on a whim.

1. Glue gun- Pillows and curtains can be made, and trim can be added to just about anything with just this one little tool. I used my glue gun most recently on my own fabric covered bulletin boards. Should you be planning a bank heist in the near future, hot glue can be used for removing fingerprints. (ask me how I know!)

2. Exacto knife- These are perfect for trimming excess paper or fabric in areas where you need a precise cute (hence the name exact-o) Combined with a ruler, the exacto knife can give you a nice, clean edge. I would not suggest the use of an exacto knife for removing fingerprints so BE CAREFUL.

3. Modge Podge- I have only recently started using modge podge. It's a beautiful product for covering nearly anything with a scrapbook, tissue, or other kinds of paper. I've even seen people use it to attach pretty paper napkins to tile for gorgeous coasters! The only limit is your imagination. I used Modge Podge to attach paper labels to these glass jars and they have held up beautifully.4. Spray adhesive- This is my favorite tool for attaching fabric to just about anything. It's tacky enough that fabric will stick, but it's forgiving enough to let you adjust things before it's stuck forever. I also used this for my fabric covered bulletin boards.

5. Stitch witchery- This stuff is great for creating clean, crisp hems on slipcovers or curtains. It's also fantastic for clothing repairs or alterations. Remember when I altered these unflattering sleeves from this post?

6. Paint brushes- Even if you aren't a painter, having a variety of paintbrushes is helpful. Small artist-type brushes are great for touch-ups, accent painting, and gold/silver leafing (does anyone do that anymore?). They are also great for faux finishing. Foam brushes work beautifully with modge podge, and of course, we need to keep brushes on hand for giving a piece of furniture new life.

7. Staple gun- If you have dining room chairs with padded seats you should have a staple gun. Replacing chair fabric is a cheap and easy way to bring new life to your dining room. There is a no sturdier or faster way to attach fabric to wood.

8. Scissors- I don't need to tell you why you need scissors. Just make sure they good and sharp. Dull scissors are no good!

9. Hammer- Some ladies will tell you that a cute pair of heels will do the trick, but I have to politely disagree. I suppose they work for putting a nail into a wall, but if you want to hang something heavy, like this project, you'll need a good hammer (and good aim!).

Did you notice there is no duct tape on my list?

[ecofriendlycrafts-blog]

Building Your Own Art Supplies Stash

One of the greatest joys of being an artist is building your own art supplies stash. Whether you’re a seasoned fine artist expanding your collection or a beginner just learning where to start, the supplies you stock are a deeply personal choice that come from time, learning and experimentation.

As your skill grows, you will find that your stash builds organically and comes from testing different supplies, media and techniques, but we’ll help you get started with our ultimate guide to building your own stash of eco-friendly art materials.

Drawing and Painting Essentials

Drawing and painting supplies are some of the largest fine art and general craft categories with virtually limitless possibilities. No matter what particular medium you choose to work with, your best bet is to have as many of these items on hand for when you find your inspiration, including:

Crayons.

Markers.

Colored pencils.

Graphite pencils.

Charcoal.

Erasers.

Pencil sharpeners.

Pastels (oil, chalk).

Chalk.

Acrylic paint.

Tempera paint.

Oil paint.

Watercolor paint.

Pan watercolors.

Palettes for different paint types.

Gesso.

Gouache.

Impasto.

Pigments.

Acrylic paint remover/brush cleaner.

Paint thinner.

Decoupage glue.

Easel.

You’ll also need a variety of brushes suited to different mediums. Brushes typically come in handy sets designed for specific mediums, so try to get a set each of acrylic, watercolor, oil and all-purpose brushes and if you have kids, a set of children’s paintbrushes and foam brushes.

For drawing and painting surfaces, there’s plenty to choose from. Sketch/drawing pads come in a variety of sizes, weights and textures, so it will take a little experimentation to find the one that works best for you. Watercolor, acrylic and mixed media pads are available as well, which are specifically designed for these mediums. Otherwise, canvases are an option, which come in several sizes, thicknesses and wrap styles. Keep in mind that canvases are a little more expensive than pads, so it may be best to keep the experimentation to the more disposable pad paper.

Modeling and Sculpting Essentials

This is another broad category, ranging from artist’s modeling clay to children’s playdough. In either case, the supplies and tools you need remain the same, such as:

Homemade clay.

Homemade cold porcelain.

Modeling beeswax.

Molding and casting kit.

Basic sculpting tools.

Clay knife.

Armature wire.

Aluminum foil.

Wire cutters.

For three-dimensional crafting, you’ll need some additional materials, like:

Wood craft sticks.

Wood shapes.

Toothpicks.

Pipe cleaners.

Googly eyes.

White glue.

Wood glue.

Glue stick.

Feathers.

Cotton balls.

Pom poms.

Craft foam.

Craft scissors.

Jewelry Making Essentials

Jewelry making is a simple craft to learn and requires few materials to get started:

String.

Fishing line.

Pony beads.

Wood beads.

Glass beads.

Needle-nosed pliers.

Wire cutters.

Jewelry-making forms.

Jewelry glue.

Millions of options are available for jewelry beads and charms, so it’s best to collect supplies as you go. Getting a divided organizer to hold beads and charms is a helpful addition as well.

Sewing, Knitting and Crocheting Essentials

Sewing, knitting and crocheting are unique in that the supply list is the same for beginners or experts, and it only grows with time.

If you’re looking to sew actual clothing or elaborate costumes, a good sewing machine is in order, but a cheap machine and hand-sewing needles are suitable for light crafting.

You’ll also need:

Sewing scissors.

Seam ripper.

A cutting board, preferably with a grid.

Fabric pens and pencils.

Seamstress tape.

Thread in a variety of colors.

Pins.

Pincushion.

Fabric.

Stuffing and batting for plush projects.

Fabric glue.

Embroidery floss.

Embroidery needles.

Embroidery hoop.

Buttons.

Garment/wool dye.

No matter what type of sewing you intend to do, the biggest part of your sewing stash will eventually be your fabric. Go to the local fabric store and pick up remnants, shop sale fabrics and cut up any old clothing to use for future projects. Before you know it, you’ll have a huge stash of different fabrics at a fraction of the cost of buying fabric to prepare for a particular project.

For knitting, crocheting or rug making, you’ll need:

Yarn.

Ribbon.

Wool.

Wool roving.

Felt.

Locker hook.

Toothbrush needle.

Rug needle.

Crochet hook.

Knitting needles.

Felting needle.

Latch hook.

Latch rug canvas backing.

Looms.

Like sewing, the biggest part of your knitting, crocheting and felting stash will be a range of different wool and yarn colors, textures and types so that you will have the most options for your next project.

General Craft Supplies

Here are some all-purpose craft supplies that you should always have on hand, especially:

Card stock.

Construction paper.

Tissue paper.

Wax paper.

Coffee filters.

Brown paper bags.

Newspaper.

All-purpose glue.

Craft tape.

Wax and varnish.

Extra scissors.

Craft vinyl.

Ruler.

Hole punch.

Floral wire.

Aprons.

Old sheets or tarp.

Small, reusable containers for water or mixing.

You can also collect supplies for future projects from the recycling bin, such as:

Cardboard boxes.

Magazines.

Junk mail.

Egg cartons.

Milk cartons.

Cans and jars.

Bottles.

Container lids.

Keep your arts and crafts stash in mind any time you’re in a thrift store or see a sale. You never know what you may use in the future, so this is a great way to collect unique odds and ends for upcycled craft projects.

This list of art supplies covers the basic, and the not-so-basic, supplies you need to get started with arts and crafts. Start small, gather a little bit at a time and experiment to find your niche, then continue to build your collection until you have all the supplies you need for whatever project inspires you on the next rainy day. Be sure to check out our collection of eco-friendly art materials and craft supplies as well, so your projects can always be green and sustainable!

What are the absolute essentials in your art supplies stash? Tag us on Instagram @ecofriendlycrafting and let us know!

The post Building Your Own Art Supplies Stash appeared first on Eco-Friendly Crafts.

[newssplashy]

MILAN — The lambent new tower of art galleries Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm, OMA, have designed for the Prada Foundation is a chameleon.

From the east, the elevation presents a slim, unadorned, milk-white concrete block, nine stories high, punctured by loggias — a signpost, like the traditional village bell tower, rising above a low, scruffy neighborhood.

To the north, where the facade meets Milan’s skyline and becomes mostly glass, cantilevering over the street, the block breaks into a zigzag of shifting floor plates, rectangles and trapezoids, the whole building wedged onto a triangular plot.

The south end makes plain how the structure stands up. An ensemble of enormous cables encased inside a giant beam counteracts the thrust of all those heavy, cantilevered concrete decks. Like a sword in a stone, the beam angles from the top of the tower through the red-tiled roof of an adjacent former warehouse, anchoring in the floor below.

In the Arthurian legend, the wizard Merlin put the sword in the stone. Koolhaas must be Merlin, I suppose. That makes Miuccia Prada, the Lady of the Lake.

The tower completes the arts campus OMA has spent the past decade conceiving for the Prada Foundation. An offshoot of the global fashion conglomerate, dedicated to contemporary art and culture, the foundation commissions new art, presents exhibitions and organizes film festivals and other events. It also oversees the vast art collection that Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, have put together. For years, it operated in far-flung locales.

In 2008, Koolhaas and a partner, Christopher van Duijn, were enlisted to reimagine a former, turn-of-the-century distillery Prada owned as the foundation’s permanent home. Walled-in, abutting a weedy stretch of railroad tracks, the distillery was a picturesque assortment of dilapidated stables, a bottling facility, a carriage house, some offices and warehouses.

The architects cleared away some of the old buildings, refurbished others. They built new ones. The tower was the last piece of the puzzle.

Without it, the site first opened to the public in 2015. It featured about 120,000 square feet of new or reconfigured exhibition space; a new cinema; a new two-story Miesian pavilion of wide open gallery spaces, called the Podium, the whole building clad in light, shimmery panels of foamed aluminum, an automotive and medical industry material also used for bomb blast absorption that looks a little like rough stone. There was even a 1950s-style Italian cafe straight out of a Wes Anderson movie.

That was because Wes Anderson designed it.

Chameleons themselves, Koolhaas and Prada made natural confederates. She was the famous communist turned high-fashion mogul whose empire evolved from bags and backpacks constructed out of an industrial nylon lining material. He was a prophet of global cities who declared the countryside his real passion after everyone else jumped on the urbanist bandwagon.

Her clothes always seemed less about what men desired than what whet her creative appetite. He was once invited to propose an expansion for the Museum of Modern Art and thumbed his nose at the selection committee by suggesting a billboard that said “MoMA Inc.” They were both contrarians and closet optimists.

And they shared a sense of humor. At one time it was rumored that Prada might back the Dutch architect for a seat in the Italian Parliament.

The foundation became their love child. It is unlike the eye-popping art gallery Frank Gehry designed for the Louis Vuitton Foundation beside the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, with its billowing glass sails, conjuring up flounces of silk and memories of Bilbao. The Prada campus feels, by comparison, world-weary, sneakily luxurious and — especially with its new tower — a mini-city, fragmentary, full of craft and secrets. Cities enshrine history and agitate for change. They’re forever unresolved.

This has been Koolhaas’ mantra. It is reflected in a foundation that’s neither a preservation project nor a tear-down-and-build-new venture. Its mode is bricolage. More is more. Both is better.

Cities are theaters and shape-shifters, too. I’m vaguely reminded of the old Cinecittàstudios outside Rome, where Fellini worked and Anderson has made films. A stable house in the former distillery now resembles the cabinet rooms in old master museums. A tiny, Alice in Wonderland door opens onto an immense warehouse, 60 feet high and 200 feet long.

And a building nicknamed the Haunted House is slathered in gold leaf, like an early Renaissance panel painting. (“A very cheap cladding material,” Koolhaas has insisted, “compared to marble or even paint.”)

“There is no difference between gold and rags,” Michelangelo Pistoletto, the veteran artist, once said. Pistoletto made his bones in the 1960s as a founder of arte povera, the Italian twist on post-minimalism. Writing in 2001, after Koolhaas’ Prada shop opened in downtown Manhattan, critic Herbert Muschamp noted Prada’s philosophical roots in arte povera.

Muschamp recalled how art povera consisted of “old bedding and tar-stained rope” displayed “in barren, out-of-the-way locations.”

Somehow, he added, “you always needed a private jet to get there.”

Up to a point, that describes the foundation, with its fetishized lowdown materials like chipboard and orange construction fencing and slightly out-of-the-way location, south of the city’s center.

Arte povera isn’t the only ghost of midcentury modernism inhabiting the project — there’s the twee cafe, with its Formica furniture and veneered wood paneling; the new tower restaurant, with its furniture bought at auction from New York’s Four Seasons; the cinema, with chairs imported from ‘70s-era Milanese movie houses; and the sun-baked, deeply shadowed squares, conjuring up de Chirico.

At the same time, there are the custom sheets of very modern translucent polycarbonate and aluminum handrails milled like Ferraris. There are the oak wood box-on-end pavers and the repurposed metal prison grates painted lime green, which serve as screens in the coat checks and bathroom stalls.

Some visitors have complained the layout doesn’t tell you where to go. You find your way around it. Like in a city. I think that is a virtue.

But until now the project was missing its cornerstone where the 200-foot-high, 22,000-square-foot tower, or Torre, was meant to rise. Delays in construction stretched three years. They ended up allowing time to refine the design.

The tower’s six, stacked gallery floors were created as full-time showcases for Prada’s private art collection. They’re reached through a small, open-air lobby like a disco ball, with flashing screens and a dizzying cutout in the ceiling to reveal the building core’s scissored stairs. One flight up, mirrored bathrooms, industrial sinks and a patterned floor summon to mind Pierre Chareau and Superstudio.

The galleries above are one to a floor, no two rooms alike, each taller than the last, their layouts shifting with the floor plates, the lowest gallery, 9 feet high; the topmost, 26 feet high.

The middle-floor galleries end up feeling the nicest, proportion-wise. But the whole building is one narrative. As Federico Pompignoli, OMA’s project manager, has said, the tower is “an attempt at the white cube defying its own boringness.”

Much credit here goes to him. He oversaw every inch of construction and it shows. Elevator cabs clad in backlit slabs of rose and green onyx suggest medieval reliquaries. I am told blacksmiths from a tiny shop outside Milan hand-tooled the restaurant’s exquisite bar, sliding doors and custom-embossed the anodized aluminum panels on the terraces that look like expensive Lego pieces. I kept running my hands over the tower’s concrete walls. Infused with Carrara marble and poured by construction workers who wore white gloves, they feel smooth as silk.

The big rectangular and wedge-shaped galleries, windows alternating between panoramas of the city and narrow views over the campus, accommodate best the large-scale works in the inaugural show, “Atlas.” It features Jeff Koons, Mona Hatoum, Michael Heizer and others. Check out the restaurant if you go. Works by Carsten Höller and Lucio Fontana are on permanent display.

From “Atlas,” I made my way through the loan exhibition about fascist art that has taken over the pavilion and stables, watching a few of the old news clips of cheering mobs and Benito Mussolini in the cinema.

Then I wandered into Anderson’s cafe and ordered what may be the most delicious sandwich I have eaten in my entire life.

Private museums are mostly vanity projects. Few invent social spaces. It may be the ultimate tribute to Koolhaas and OMA to say that the Prada campus works. The plazas are poetic. The galleries are practical and varied.

Prada should be pleased and maybe a little worried. It’s up to the foundation to program these spaces for generations to come.

Architecturally speaking, there’s a lot to live up to.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

MICHAEL KIMMELMAN © 2018 The New York Times

via NewsSplashy - Latest Nigerian News Online

[newssplashy]

MILAN — The lambent new tower of art galleries Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm, OMA, have designed for the Prada Foundation is a chameleon.

From the east, the elevation presents a slim, unadorned, milk-white concrete block, nine stories high, punctured by loggias — a signpost, like the traditional village bell tower, rising above a low, scruffy neighborhood.

To the north, where the facade meets Milan’s skyline and becomes mostly glass, cantilevering over the street, the block breaks into a zigzag of shifting floor plates, rectangles and trapezoids, the whole building wedged onto a triangular plot.

The south end makes plain how the structure stands up. An ensemble of enormous cables encased inside a giant beam counteracts the thrust of all those heavy, cantilevered concrete decks. Like a sword in a stone, the beam angles from the top of the tower through the red-tiled roof of an adjacent former warehouse, anchoring in the floor below.

In the Arthurian legend, the wizard Merlin put the sword in the stone. Koolhaas must be Merlin, I suppose. That makes Miuccia Prada, the Lady of the Lake.

The tower completes the arts campus OMA has spent the past decade conceiving for the Prada Foundation. An offshoot of the global fashion conglomerate, dedicated to contemporary art and culture, the foundation commissions new art, presents exhibitions and organizes film festivals and other events. It also oversees the vast art collection that Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, have put together. For years, it operated in far-flung locales.

In 2008, Koolhaas and a partner, Christopher van Duijn, were enlisted to reimagine a former, turn-of-the-century distillery Prada owned as the foundation’s permanent home. Walled-in, abutting a weedy stretch of railroad tracks, the distillery was a picturesque assortment of dilapidated stables, a bottling facility, a carriage house, some offices and warehouses.

The architects cleared away some of the old buildings, refurbished others. They built new ones. The tower was the last piece of the puzzle.

Without it, the site first opened to the public in 2015. It featured about 120,000 square feet of new or reconfigured exhibition space; a new cinema; a new two-story Miesian pavilion of wide open gallery spaces, called the Podium, the whole building clad in light, shimmery panels of foamed aluminum, an automotive and medical industry material also used for bomb blast absorption that looks a little like rough stone. There was even a 1950s-style Italian cafe straight out of a Wes Anderson movie.

That was because Wes Anderson designed it.

Chameleons themselves, Koolhaas and Prada made natural confederates. She was the famous communist turned high-fashion mogul whose empire evolved from bags and backpacks constructed out of an industrial nylon lining material. He was a prophet of global cities who declared the countryside his real passion after everyone else jumped on the urbanist bandwagon.

Her clothes always seemed less about what men desired than what whet her creative appetite. He was once invited to propose an expansion for the Museum of Modern Art and thumbed his nose at the selection committee by suggesting a billboard that said “MoMA Inc.” They were both contrarians and closet optimists.

And they shared a sense of humor. At one time it was rumored that Prada might back the Dutch architect for a seat in the Italian Parliament.

The foundation became their love child. It is unlike the eye-popping art gallery Frank Gehry designed for the Louis Vuitton Foundation beside the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, with its billowing glass sails, conjuring up flounces of silk and memories of Bilbao. The Prada campus feels, by comparison, world-weary, sneakily luxurious and — especially with its new tower — a mini-city, fragmentary, full of craft and secrets. Cities enshrine history and agitate for change. They’re forever unresolved.

This has been Koolhaas’ mantra. It is reflected in a foundation that’s neither a preservation project nor a tear-down-and-build-new venture. Its mode is bricolage. More is more. Both is better.

Cities are theaters and shape-shifters, too. I’m vaguely reminded of the old Cinecittàstudios outside Rome, where Fellini worked and Anderson has made films. A stable house in the former distillery now resembles the cabinet rooms in old master museums. A tiny, Alice in Wonderland door opens onto an immense warehouse, 60 feet high and 200 feet long.

And a building nicknamed the Haunted House is slathered in gold leaf, like an early Renaissance panel painting. (“A very cheap cladding material,” Koolhaas has insisted, “compared to marble or even paint.”)

“There is no difference between gold and rags,” Michelangelo Pistoletto, the veteran artist, once said. Pistoletto made his bones in the 1960s as a founder of arte povera, the Italian twist on post-minimalism. Writing in 2001, after Koolhaas’ Prada shop opened in downtown Manhattan, critic Herbert Muschamp noted Prada’s philosophical roots in arte povera.

Muschamp recalled how art povera consisted of “old bedding and tar-stained rope” displayed “in barren, out-of-the-way locations.”

Somehow, he added, “you always needed a private jet to get there.”

Up to a point, that describes the foundation, with its fetishized lowdown materials like chipboard and orange construction fencing and slightly out-of-the-way location, south of the city’s center.

Arte povera isn’t the only ghost of midcentury modernism inhabiting the project — there’s the twee cafe, with its Formica furniture and veneered wood paneling; the new tower restaurant, with its furniture bought at auction from New York’s Four Seasons; the cinema, with chairs imported from ‘70s-era Milanese movie houses; and the sun-baked, deeply shadowed squares, conjuring up de Chirico.

At the same time, there are the custom sheets of very modern translucent polycarbonate and aluminum handrails milled like Ferraris. There are the oak wood box-on-end pavers and the repurposed metal prison grates painted lime green, which serve as screens in the coat checks and bathroom stalls.

Some visitors have complained the layout doesn’t tell you where to go. You find your way around it. Like in a city. I think that is a virtue.

But until now the project was missing its cornerstone where the 200-foot-high, 22,000-square-foot tower, or Torre, was meant to rise. Delays in construction stretched three years. They ended up allowing time to refine the design.

The tower’s six, stacked gallery floors were created as full-time showcases for Prada’s private art collection. They’re reached through a small, open-air lobby like a disco ball, with flashing screens and a dizzying cutout in the ceiling to reveal the building core’s scissored stairs. One flight up, mirrored bathrooms, industrial sinks and a patterned floor summon to mind Pierre Chareau and Superstudio.

The galleries above are one to a floor, no two rooms alike, each taller than the last, their layouts shifting with the floor plates, the lowest gallery, 9 feet high; the topmost, 26 feet high.

The middle-floor galleries end up feeling the nicest, proportion-wise. But the whole building is one narrative. As Federico Pompignoli, OMA’s project manager, has said, the tower is “an attempt at the white cube defying its own boringness.”

Much credit here goes to him. He oversaw every inch of construction and it shows. Elevator cabs clad in backlit slabs of rose and green onyx suggest medieval reliquaries. I am told blacksmiths from a tiny shop outside Milan hand-tooled the restaurant’s exquisite bar, sliding doors and custom-embossed the anodized aluminum panels on the terraces that look like expensive Lego pieces. I kept running my hands over the tower’s concrete walls. Infused with Carrara marble and poured by construction workers who wore white gloves, they feel smooth as silk.

The big rectangular and wedge-shaped galleries, windows alternating between panoramas of the city and narrow views over the campus, accommodate best the large-scale works in the inaugural show, “Atlas.” It features Jeff Koons, Mona Hatoum, Michael Heizer and others. Check out the restaurant if you go. Works by Carsten Höller and Lucio Fontana are on permanent display.

From “Atlas,” I made my way through the loan exhibition about fascist art that has taken over the pavilion and stables, watching a few of the old news clips of cheering mobs and Benito Mussolini in the cinema.

Then I wandered into Anderson’s cafe and ordered what may be the most delicious sandwich I have eaten in my entire life.

Private museums are mostly vanity projects. Few invent social spaces. It may be the ultimate tribute to Koolhaas and OMA to say that the Prada campus works. The plazas are poetic. The galleries are practical and varied.

Prada should be pleased and maybe a little worried. It’s up to the foundation to program these spaces for generations to come.

Architecturally speaking, there’s a lot to live up to.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

MICHAEL KIMMELMAN © 2018 The New York Times

via NewsSplashy - Latest Nigerian News Online

[newssplashy]

Opinion: A microcity of secrets is complete

MILAN — The lambent new tower of art galleries Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm, OMA, have designed for the Prada Foundation is a chameleon.

From the east, the elevation presents a slim, unadorned, milk-white concrete block, nine stories high, punctured by loggias — a signpost, like the traditional village bell tower, rising above a low, scruffy neighborhood.

To the north, where the facade meets Milan’s skyline and becomes mostly glass, cantilevering over the street, the block breaks into a zigzag of shifting floor plates, rectangles and trapezoids, the whole building wedged onto a triangular plot.

The south end makes plain how the structure stands up. An ensemble of enormous cables encased inside a giant beam counteracts the thrust of all those heavy, cantilevered concrete decks. Like a sword in a stone, the beam angles from the top of the tower through the red-tiled roof of an adjacent former warehouse, anchoring in the floor below.

In the Arthurian legend, the wizard Merlin put the sword in the stone. Koolhaas must be Merlin, I suppose. That makes Miuccia Prada, the Lady of the Lake.

The tower completes the arts campus OMA has spent the past decade conceiving for the Prada Foundation. An offshoot of the global fashion conglomerate, dedicated to contemporary art and culture, the foundation commissions new art, presents exhibitions and organizes film festivals and other events. It also oversees the vast art collection that Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, have put together. For years, it operated in far-flung locales.

In 2008, Koolhaas and a partner, Christopher van Duijn, were enlisted to reimagine a former, turn-of-the-century distillery Prada owned as the foundation’s permanent home. Walled-in, abutting a weedy stretch of railroad tracks, the distillery was a picturesque assortment of dilapidated stables, a bottling facility, a carriage house, some offices and warehouses.

The architects cleared away some of the old buildings, refurbished others. They built new ones. The tower was the last piece of the puzzle.

Without it, the site first opened to the public in 2015. It featured about 120,000 square feet of new or reconfigured exhibition space; a new cinema; a new two-story Miesian pavilion of wide open gallery spaces, called the Podium, the whole building clad in light, shimmery panels of foamed aluminum, an automotive and medical industry material also used for bomb blast absorption that looks a little like rough stone. There was even a 1950s-style Italian cafe straight out of a Wes Anderson movie.

That was because Wes Anderson designed it.

Chameleons themselves, Koolhaas and Prada made natural confederates. She was the famous communist turned high-fashion mogul whose empire evolved from bags and backpacks constructed out of an industrial nylon lining material. He was a prophet of global cities who declared the countryside his real passion after everyone else jumped on the urbanist bandwagon.

Her clothes always seemed less about what men desired than what whet her creative appetite. He was once invited to propose an expansion for the Museum of Modern Art and thumbed his nose at the selection committee by suggesting a billboard that said “MoMA Inc.” They were both contrarians and closet optimists.

And they shared a sense of humor. At one time it was rumored that Prada might back the Dutch architect for a seat in the Italian Parliament.

The foundation became their love child. It is unlike the eye-popping art gallery Frank Gehry designed for the Louis Vuitton Foundation beside the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, with its billowing glass sails, conjuring up flounces of silk and memories of Bilbao. The Prada campus feels, by comparison, world-weary, sneakily luxurious and — especially with its new tower — a mini-city, fragmentary, full of craft and secrets. Cities enshrine history and agitate for change. They’re forever unresolved.

This has been Koolhaas’ mantra. It is reflected in a foundation that’s neither a preservation project nor a tear-down-and-build-new venture. Its mode is bricolage. More is more. Both is better.

Cities are theaters and shape-shifters, too. I’m vaguely reminded of the old Cinecittàstudios outside Rome, where Fellini worked and Anderson has made films. A stable house in the former distillery now resembles the cabinet rooms in old master museums. A tiny, Alice in Wonderland door opens onto an immense warehouse, 60 feet high and 200 feet long.

And a building nicknamed the Haunted House is slathered in gold leaf, like an early Renaissance panel painting. (“A very cheap cladding material,” Koolhaas has insisted, “compared to marble or even paint.”)

“There is no difference between gold and rags,” Michelangelo Pistoletto, the veteran artist, once said. Pistoletto made his bones in the 1960s as a founder of arte povera, the Italian twist on post-minimalism. Writing in 2001, after Koolhaas’ Prada shop opened in downtown Manhattan, critic Herbert Muschamp noted Prada’s philosophical roots in arte povera.

Muschamp recalled how art povera consisted of “old bedding and tar-stained rope” displayed “in barren, out-of-the-way locations.”

Somehow, he added, “you always needed a private jet to get there.”

Up to a point, that describes the foundation, with its fetishized lowdown materials like chipboard and orange construction fencing and slightly out-of-the-way location, south of the city’s center.

Arte povera isn’t the only ghost of midcentury modernism inhabiting the project — there’s the twee cafe, with its Formica furniture and veneered wood paneling; the new tower restaurant, with its furniture bought at auction from New York’s Four Seasons; the cinema, with chairs imported from ‘70s-era Milanese movie houses; and the sun-baked, deeply shadowed squares, conjuring up de Chirico.

At the same time, there are the custom sheets of very modern translucent polycarbonate and aluminum handrails milled like Ferraris. There are the oak wood box-on-end pavers and the repurposed metal prison grates painted lime green, which serve as screens in the coat checks and bathroom stalls.

Some visitors have complained the layout doesn’t tell you where to go. You find your way around it. Like in a city. I think that is a virtue.

But until now the project was missing its cornerstone where the 200-foot-high, 22,000-square-foot tower, or Torre, was meant to rise. Delays in construction stretched three years. They ended up allowing time to refine the design.

The tower’s six, stacked gallery floors were created as full-time showcases for Prada’s private art collection. They’re reached through a small, open-air lobby like a disco ball, with flashing screens and a dizzying cutout in the ceiling to reveal the building core’s scissored stairs. One flight up, mirrored bathrooms, industrial sinks and a patterned floor summon to mind Pierre Chareau and Superstudio.

The galleries above are one to a floor, no two rooms alike, each taller than the last, their layouts shifting with the floor plates, the lowest gallery, 9 feet high; the topmost, 26 feet high.

The middle-floor galleries end up feeling the nicest, proportion-wise. But the whole building is one narrative. As Federico Pompignoli, OMA’s project manager, has said, the tower is “an attempt at the white cube defying its own boringness.”

Much credit here goes to him. He oversaw every inch of construction and it shows. Elevator cabs clad in backlit slabs of rose and green onyx suggest medieval reliquaries. I am told blacksmiths from a tiny shop outside Milan hand-tooled the restaurant’s exquisite bar, sliding doors and custom-embossed the anodized aluminum panels on the terraces that look like expensive Lego pieces. I kept running my hands over the tower’s concrete walls. Infused with Carrara marble and poured by construction workers who wore white gloves, they feel smooth as silk.

The big rectangular and wedge-shaped galleries, windows alternating between panoramas of the city and narrow views over the campus, accommodate best the large-scale works in the inaugural show, “Atlas.” It features Jeff Koons, Mona Hatoum, Michael Heizer and others. Check out the restaurant if you go. Works by Carsten Höller and Lucio Fontana are on permanent display.

From “Atlas,” I made my way through the loan exhibition about fascist art that has taken over the pavilion and stables, watching a few of the old news clips of cheering mobs and Benito Mussolini in the cinema.

Then I wandered into Anderson’s cafe and ordered what may be the most delicious sandwich I have eaten in my entire life.

Private museums are mostly vanity projects. Few invent social spaces. It may be the ultimate tribute to Koolhaas and OMA to say that the Prada campus works. The plazas are poetic. The galleries are practical and varied.

Prada should be pleased and maybe a little worried. It’s up to the foundation to program these spaces for generations to come.

Architecturally speaking, there’s a lot to live up to.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

MICHAEL KIMMELMAN © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/opinion-microcity-of-secrets-is-complete_15.html

[newssplashy]

Opinion: A microcity of secrets is complete

MILAN — The lambent new tower of art galleries Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm, OMA, have designed for the Prada Foundation is a chameleon.

From the east, the elevation presents a slim, unadorned, milk-white concrete block, nine stories high, punctured by loggias — a signpost, like the traditional village bell tower, rising above a low, scruffy neighborhood.

To the north, where the facade meets Milan’s skyline and becomes mostly glass, cantilevering over the street, the block breaks into a zigzag of shifting floor plates, rectangles and trapezoids, the whole building wedged onto a triangular plot.

The south end makes plain how the structure stands up. An ensemble of enormous cables encased inside a giant beam counteracts the thrust of all those heavy, cantilevered concrete decks. Like a sword in a stone, the beam angles from the top of the tower through the red-tiled roof of an adjacent former warehouse, anchoring in the floor below.

In the Arthurian legend, the wizard Merlin put the sword in the stone. Koolhaas must be Merlin, I suppose. That makes Miuccia Prada, the Lady of the Lake.

The tower completes the arts campus OMA has spent the past decade conceiving for the Prada Foundation. An offshoot of the global fashion conglomerate, dedicated to contemporary art and culture, the foundation commissions new art, presents exhibitions and organizes film festivals and other events. It also oversees the vast art collection that Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, have put together. For years, it operated in far-flung locales.

In 2008, Koolhaas and a partner, Christopher van Duijn, were enlisted to reimagine a former, turn-of-the-century distillery Prada owned as the foundation’s permanent home. Walled-in, abutting a weedy stretch of railroad tracks, the distillery was a picturesque assortment of dilapidated stables, a bottling facility, a carriage house, some offices and warehouses.

The architects cleared away some of the old buildings, refurbished others. They built new ones. The tower was the last piece of the puzzle.

Without it, the site first opened to the public in 2015. It featured about 120,000 square feet of new or reconfigured exhibition space; a new cinema; a new two-story Miesian pavilion of wide open gallery spaces, called the Podium, the whole building clad in light, shimmery panels of foamed aluminum, an automotive and medical industry material also used for bomb blast absorption that looks a little like rough stone. There was even a 1950s-style Italian cafe straight out of a Wes Anderson movie.

That was because Wes Anderson designed it.

Chameleons themselves, Koolhaas and Prada made natural confederates. She was the famous communist turned high-fashion mogul whose empire evolved from bags and backpacks constructed out of an industrial nylon lining material. He was a prophet of global cities who declared the countryside his real passion after everyone else jumped on the urbanist bandwagon.

Her clothes always seemed less about what men desired than what whet her creative appetite. He was once invited to propose an expansion for the Museum of Modern Art and thumbed his nose at the selection committee by suggesting a billboard that said “MoMA Inc.” They were both contrarians and closet optimists.

And they shared a sense of humor. At one time it was rumored that Prada might back the Dutch architect for a seat in the Italian Parliament.

The foundation became their love child. It is unlike the eye-popping art gallery Frank Gehry designed for the Louis Vuitton Foundation beside the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, with its billowing glass sails, conjuring up flounces of silk and memories of Bilbao. The Prada campus feels, by comparison, world-weary, sneakily luxurious and — especially with its new tower — a mini-city, fragmentary, full of craft and secrets. Cities enshrine history and agitate for change. They’re forever unresolved.

This has been Koolhaas’ mantra. It is reflected in a foundation that’s neither a preservation project nor a tear-down-and-build-new venture. Its mode is bricolage. More is more. Both is better.

Cities are theaters and shape-shifters, too. I’m vaguely reminded of the old Cinecittàstudios outside Rome, where Fellini worked and Anderson has made films. A stable house in the former distillery now resembles the cabinet rooms in old master museums. A tiny, Alice in Wonderland door opens onto an immense warehouse, 60 feet high and 200 feet long.

And a building nicknamed the Haunted House is slathered in gold leaf, like an early Renaissance panel painting. (“A very cheap cladding material,” Koolhaas has insisted, “compared to marble or even paint.”)

“There is no difference between gold and rags,” Michelangelo Pistoletto, the veteran artist, once said. Pistoletto made his bones in the 1960s as a founder of arte povera, the Italian twist on post-minimalism. Writing in 2001, after Koolhaas’ Prada shop opened in downtown Manhattan, critic Herbert Muschamp noted Prada’s philosophical roots in arte povera.

Muschamp recalled how art povera consisted of “old bedding and tar-stained rope” displayed “in barren, out-of-the-way locations.”

Somehow, he added, “you always needed a private jet to get there.”

Up to a point, that describes the foundation, with its fetishized lowdown materials like chipboard and orange construction fencing and slightly out-of-the-way location, south of the city’s center.

Arte povera isn’t the only ghost of midcentury modernism inhabiting the project — there’s the twee cafe, with its Formica furniture and veneered wood paneling; the new tower restaurant, with its furniture bought at auction from New York’s Four Seasons; the cinema, with chairs imported from ‘70s-era Milanese movie houses; and the sun-baked, deeply shadowed squares, conjuring up de Chirico.

At the same time, there are the custom sheets of very modern translucent polycarbonate and aluminum handrails milled like Ferraris. There are the oak wood box-on-end pavers and the repurposed metal prison grates painted lime green, which serve as screens in the coat checks and bathroom stalls.

Some visitors have complained the layout doesn’t tell you where to go. You find your way around it. Like in a city. I think that is a virtue.

But until now the project was missing its cornerstone where the 200-foot-high, 22,000-square-foot tower, or Torre, was meant to rise. Delays in construction stretched three years. They ended up allowing time to refine the design.

The tower’s six, stacked gallery floors were created as full-time showcases for Prada’s private art collection. They’re reached through a small, open-air lobby like a disco ball, with flashing screens and a dizzying cutout in the ceiling to reveal the building core’s scissored stairs. One flight up, mirrored bathrooms, industrial sinks and a patterned floor summon to mind Pierre Chareau and Superstudio.

The galleries above are one to a floor, no two rooms alike, each taller than the last, their layouts shifting with the floor plates, the lowest gallery, 9 feet high; the topmost, 26 feet high.

The middle-floor galleries end up feeling the nicest, proportion-wise. But the whole building is one narrative. As Federico Pompignoli, OMA’s project manager, has said, the tower is “an attempt at the white cube defying its own boringness.”

Much credit here goes to him. He oversaw every inch of construction and it shows. Elevator cabs clad in backlit slabs of rose and green onyx suggest medieval reliquaries. I am told blacksmiths from a tiny shop outside Milan hand-tooled the restaurant’s exquisite bar, sliding doors and custom-embossed the anodized aluminum panels on the terraces that look like expensive Lego pieces. I kept running my hands over the tower’s concrete walls. Infused with Carrara marble and poured by construction workers who wore white gloves, they feel smooth as silk.

The big rectangular and wedge-shaped galleries, windows alternating between panoramas of the city and narrow views over the campus, accommodate best the large-scale works in the inaugural show, “Atlas.” It features Jeff Koons, Mona Hatoum, Michael Heizer and others. Check out the restaurant if you go. Works by Carsten Höller and Lucio Fontana are on permanent display.

From “Atlas,” I made my way through the loan exhibition about fascist art that has taken over the pavilion and stables, watching a few of the old news clips of cheering mobs and Benito Mussolini in the cinema.

Then I wandered into Anderson’s cafe and ordered what may be the most delicious sandwich I have eaten in my entire life.

Private museums are mostly vanity projects. Few invent social spaces. It may be the ultimate tribute to Koolhaas and OMA to say that the Prada campus works. The plazas are poetic. The galleries are practical and varied.

Prada should be pleased and maybe a little worried. It’s up to the foundation to program these spaces for generations to come.

Architecturally speaking, there’s a lot to live up to.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

MICHAEL KIMMELMAN © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/opinion-microcity-of-secrets-is-complete.html