Epicenter Los Angeles

OMA followed the success of the New York Epicenter with a new space on historic Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

The design in some ways is the inverse of New York: a wave starts at street level and rises to the second floor before dropping back down again. The façade is formed from a single slab of aluminum and the display windows are submerged below the sidewalk with floor-mounted glass apertures. Many of the inside walls are composed of a specially fabricated resin sponge that lend a strange, porous quality to the space.

Inside the store, a large wooden stair forms a hill. 

A counterpart to the wave in the New York store, this supports an aluminum box. Floating above the entrance in the mirrored alcove beneath the stair-hill, the black and white marble floor and the vitrines make reference to the first Prada store from 1913 in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan.

The aluminum box is lined with a new material specifically developed for Prada: half matter, half air, the ‘sponge.’ The stair provides a porous artificial background for the merchandise and further expands Prada’s physical identity in its stores.

It is framed with laminated glass fading from translucent to transparent, seemingly shrinking or enlarging the store’s size in response to the presenceof customers. A roof structure spanning the entire third floor admits daylight to the space. 

The Los Angeles Epicenter has been restored in 2012.