Prada Los Angeles Epicenter
Los Angeles
Office for Metropolitan Architecture

In Beverly Hills, Rem Koolhaas sets out to critique and subvert the local culture of consumerism and snooty exclusivity

© Floto+Warner Studio

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

When Rem Koolhaas and his firm, OMA, designed the “Epicenter” Prada within this shopping epicenter, they conceived of a store to supercede Rodeo Drive’s hedonistic formula. Consciously subverting the local culture from within its establishment, Koolhaas set out to critique the commission’s core of consumerism—challenging a well-worn norm, while fixing what wasn’t broken.

Sometimes form is content, but not on Rodeo Drive, where form is formality: Its storefronts entice shoppers into guarded boutiques, casting an intimidating aura of exclusivity. Koolhaas’s contrarian creativity often inverts the expected, and with his three-story, 24,000-square-foot, midblock Prada building (with 14,750 square feet for retail), he embarked on overturning the typology of the shop.

The inversion begins at the entrance, where OMA eliminates the conventional storefront, dissolving Rodeo’s fence of intimidation with a void, or open entryway and underground displays transparently capped by large, flush disks, set like oversize elliptical manhole lids underfoot.

The only apparent “architecture” consists of a huge, utterly plain aluminum streetfront elevation. A truss allows this facade to span across the lot, hovering a full story above the sidewalk, as the pavement slips into the interior. The void draws visitors through an air curtain, toward a broad, commanding staircase rising to a second-floor plateau.

On this 50-foot-wide lot, bounded by party walls, OMA echoes design strategies from its New York City Prada store, which beckons shoppers not up a hill, but down into a wave, with access to clothes along its underground edges.

The heroic flight of stairs, doubling as an amphitheater, rises into an increasingly interactive and mediated environment. Glass walls along the steps fog over as shoppers pass; dressing-room cameras capture visitors, front and back, with delayed video release on private monitors, turning consumers into actors in their own miniseries.

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Formal name of Project:
Prada Los Angeles Epicenter

Location:
Los Angeles

Gross square footage:
24.000 sq. ft.

Owner:
Prada (I.P.I. USA Corp.)

Architect:
Office for Metropolitan Architecture
Heer Bokelweg 149
3032 AD
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Tel. 0031 (0)10 243 8200
Fax. 0031 (0) 10 243 8202
www.oma.nl