#prada transformer

I’ve been thinking about Rem Koolhaas’s Transformer building a lot lately. Designed in 2009, the temporary building was designed for a festival Prada was producing around art, film, architecture, and fashion. 

Launched in Seoul, South Korea, at the end of April 2009, the Prada Transformer designed by OMA/Rem Koolhaas showcased a groundbreaking series of cross-cultural exhibitions, screenings and live events. For six months this shape-shifting venue hosted multiple interdisciplinary projects, bringing a unique mix of visual arts to Korea.

Situated next to the 16th-century Gyeonghui Palace, the Prada Transformer dramatically juxtaposed Korean history, tradition and folklore with this 21st-century multi-dimensional event space.

Instead of designing four separate pavilions, Koolhaas and his team at OMA designed one structure where four individual shapes — a circle, a cross, a hexagon, a rectangle — lean together and are connected by a flexible material. Each shape represents the different programs of the festival and for each part of the event, the building is rotated by a large crane, essentially creating a new structure each day:

The Transformer combined the four sides of a tetrahedron: hexagon, cross, rectangle and circle into one pavilion. The building, entirely covered with a smooth elastic membrane, was flipped using cranes, completely reconfiguring the visitor’s experience with each new programme. Each side plan was precisely designed to organize a different event installation creating a building with four identities. Whenever one shape becomes the ground plan, the other three shapes become the walls and the ceiling defining the space, as well as referencing historic or anticipating future event configurations.  

Here’s a great video of Koolhaas presenting the structure to Prada with models of various sizes, explaining the concept and how the structure would function:

ArchDaily interview OMA’s Vincent McIlduff five years later to talk about what they learned from the process:

One of the major challenges was in developing a structural system for the connections between the huge steel shapes which were to be assembled on site. The geometry of this tetrahedron was complex, and the specific angles of these connections intricate (however, 5 years on I can still remember each angle!). We then came up with a system to accurately pre-fabricate these points of connection so the large steel shapes could be slotted into their exact position and bolted into place.

OMA’s frequent collaborators, 2x4, also did all the graphic design and branding around the event, translating the four shapes into a strong visual language:

(Rendering by OMA)