FW 2010 Womenswear

In his work On the Art of Buildings in Ten Books, Leon Battista Alberti asks the following question:

“If the city is like some large house and the house in turn like some small city, cannot the varied parts of the house …be considered miniature buildings?

The Prada show space is as an abstraction of a city. City programs such as cinema, bar, parks etc… are generically rebuilt. Yet, it inherits the domestic scale of a club with its dark, cozy and moody atmosphere.

The urban elements are: a bar clad with industrial checker plate; a beauty shop advertising for surreal products; a pink foam music hall; a news center displaying ambiguous lists; a tribune for the crowd; a checker board floor of Prada galleria; a cinema with raising ranks; an artificial Central park from green resin; a kiosk; the street with its common signage; the projections in the public viewing area.  

And yet, the private atmosphere is: the black painted and wall papered surfaces; the rising smoke; the intimate movie projection about the story in which the protagonists share with us their dreams and anxieties.

The model (or better the inhabitant?) passes through this small city and large house as if it is one of us becoming a mirror of the wish experiencing these moments of life by ourselves.

Credit: OMA